The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 1 Sea Scorpion, Brood and Sakaban Turtle

4.5 million years ago, late Ordovician period.

The warm sunlight shines through the sparkling water, making the sea water look exceptionally blue. Trilobites can be vaguely seen on the seabed. Among the coral reefs that have become somewhat beautiful in later generations, the remains of bryozoans and other early reef-building organisms are stacked up in layers. A few weird armored fish swim clumsily, making this area The tropical shallow sea along the coast of Wana Continent presents a realm of vitality and all things.

But such scenery still couldn't change Lin Yi's mood of wanting to cry without tears. This is not a description of complex emotions, but the absence of tears in the physical sense - this body has no such thing as tear glands.

Just a day ago, he was surfing the waves happily on the Internet. He only remembered that he finally made a comment, "Maybe everyone has seen the fish in the Cambrian in this picture." Then he sadly discovered that his consciousness had traveled through time. Four hundred million years later, he woke up in the body of this giant insect, which should be called the feather-winged horseshoe crab or the giant penlith horseshoe crab based on the memory of his previous life.

He didn't know if any fish in the Cambrian had seen that picture, but now, in the Ordovician that followed, a feather-winged horseshoe crab had indeed seen that picture...

Thinking about it, among the clusters of corals in front, a head wrapped in a thick shell slowly poked out, revealing a cute expression that was incompatible with the armor wrapping the head and chest.

The smile with a bit of surprise was so innocent, but in Lin Yi's eyes, it seemed to be mocking his tragic fate.

Based on the memory of his previous life, Lin Yi recognized that this was the Sakaban soft-shelled turtle, one of the most common early fishes in the Ordovician period. It also became the most famous turtle-shelled fish on the Internet because of an emoticon that unexpectedly became popular. .

Compared with the image in the famous meme of later generations, in reality they have longer tails and tail fins, and the armor on the front half of the body is also more prominent.

But what remains unchanged is the small mouth that cannot be closed because the jaws have not yet evolved, and its position in the food chain of this era.

Suddenly, a cloud of fine sand exploded on the seabed in front of the Sakaban turtle, turning the nearby clear seawater into turbidity. A pair of sickle-shaped curved appendages covered with ferocious spines moved with lightning speed. The force reached out and firmly captured the Sakaban turtle that had not yet reacted.

"The fish these days are really stupid. How old is this fish just now? If this thing lives to be 400 million years in the future, how come those fishermen are flying in the air every day!"

After retracting his appendages, Lin Yicai managed to calm down a bit.

The raised fine sand gradually settled, revealing the figure of the owner of the appendage.

It was a weird arthropod that was five or six times as long as the Sakaban soft-shell turtle and looked like a mixture of a scorpion, a shrimp and a crab. The pair of sickle-shaped appendages that tightly gripped the Sakaban soft-shell turtle were born at the front end of the lute-shaped torso. , followed by two pairs of shorter jointed limbs similar to the legs of later crabs and a pair of flat, paddle-like paddling feet, which were swinging to help stabilize the body.

This weird-looking arthropod is Lin Yi's "original body" after his rebirth - the giant feather-winged horseshoe crab.

Previously, he used the sickle-shaped appendage of this body to successfully kill an unlucky trilobite, and tore off some small inverted triangular mouths that could be easily opened or closed by the Sakaban turtle. After swallowing the small pieces of debris, he buried his body under the sand in an area where fish were densely packed, and started doing what a fisherman does.

And it turns out that such clumsy techniques are effective in this era. After a while, several Sakaban turtles took the bait and were captured by the sickle-shaped appendages of his body.

Thinking about it, the sickle limbs were drawn inward, and the slender scorpion-like tail was lifted upwards and above the head. The two horizontally symmetrically arranged tail fin-shaped armor plates at the end opened, revealing the sharp points between the crescent shovel-like structures. Tail spines. The tail spines pierced hard into the gap between the shell of the head and neck of the Sakaban turtle. A touch of blood spread among the blue waves, and the body of the Sakaban turtle gradually stopped struggling.

After swinging his appendages twice, Lin Yi controlled his body and slowly flattened his tail, which had a scorpion-like tail hook and a flat shrimp-like tail end. He swung his tail and paddling feet, turned around, and left with his tawny body. The seabed started to swim in one direction, following the vague connection in the consciousness.

The body slowly sank downwards and landed on the open seabed. Two pairs of walking feet and a pair of paddling feet stepped on the fine sand. Together with the buoyancy of the sea water, they supported the huge insect body, which was nearly the height of an adult.

A pair of black compound eyes looked at the huge object half buried in the sand, and slowly put down the Sakaban turtle tightly clamped in the sickle limbs.

When he regained consciousness in the body of the feather-winged horseshoe crab, this thing stood here - or to be precise, this body was born from the strange organism in front of him that could not tell whether it was an animal or a plant.

In other words, it was Lin Yi's real first consciousness carrier after time travel. However, for some reasons, his consciousness was completely awakened when the feather-winged horseshoe crab body was produced.

This thing reminded Lin Yi of the Zerg Brood in later film and television works, so he decided to simply call it the Brood.

There are several hexagonal holes on the hemispherical main body of the mother nest, each of which is enough to fit a feather-winged horseshoe crab, making it look like a huge honeycomb. The flesh and blood tissue all proves that it is alive.

The muscle tissue in a hole on the mother's nest contracts, slowly swallowing the body of the Sakaban turtle.

From the moment he regained consciousness, Lin Yi had a strange feeling, as if the nest was not another living organism, but a part of his own body, an extra limb.

There is no so-called body between the body of the feather-winged horseshoe crab and the mother's nest. Instead, they seem to be completely equal, two independent individuals, just like a person's left and right hands.

Just like the colonies of ants, bees and other eusocial species in Lin Yi's previous life. The behavior of all individuals is determined by the pheromone network in the air, and each individual releases different pheromones according to changes in the environment, affecting this pheromone network.

Among them, each individual is equivalent to a brain cell, the pheromone signal is equivalent to the nervous system, and the pheromone network composed of various pheromones and other chemical substances is the real brain, controlling the operation of the group. Therefore, communities of eusocial species are also called "superorganisms."

The mother's nest and the body of the feather-winged horseshoe crab form such a super individual. It's just that the "nervous system" connecting the "brain cells" has been greatly upgraded, making this super individual truly similar to the concept of "hive mind" in various film and television works.

And since it is a "super-individual" or "hive mind", two individuals must not be its limit. Therefore, he controlled the body of the feather-winged horseshoe crab to hunt a large number of Sakaban turtles, brought the food back, and supplied it to the mother nest. Now, it was time to verify the results.

In addition to the connection with the mother nest, there is another connection that seems to be invisible and becomes more and more obvious. In another hole on the hemispherical body of the mother nest, something seemed to be slowly awakening. As the perception gradually became clear, the sensory signal of another body was transmitted into Lin Yi's consciousness.

A pair of familiar sickle limbs slowly protruded from the other hole, followed by an oval head and a pipa-shaped body - it was another feathered horseshoe crab, the same as Lin Yi's previous body.

But at this time, its exoskeleton has not yet completely hardened, and the remnants of a layer of membrane are still vaguely visible on several limbs, proving that it is a brand new individual just born from the mother's nest!
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  (End of this chapter)