The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 179 A long time

After an unknown amount of time, Lin Yi finally felt that he seemed to have vaguely touched something that the encrypted genetic sequence wanted to hide.

But the next second he touched that gene fragment, a strange feeling came over him.

The next second, whether on land or in the sea, a large number of hive-level individuals suddenly stopped all activities at hand.

To be precise, they are still moving, but they have lost the orderliness of their past activities, stumbling around like headless flies. Their compound eyes no longer show the luster of thoughts, but are full of sluggishness, as if they were caught in a blur. The soul was taken away.

the next day. This situation continues and causes massive chaos.

On land, land workers wandered around driven by instinct, no longer taking care of the lichen they usually took care of, nor taking care of other grades that were unable to take care of themselves.

The consequences of this move were fatal. The saw-toothed saw ants can no longer obtain nutrients from the mother nest, and the streamlined digestive system to make room for the attacking structure cannot digest flesh and blood normally, and they can only starve to death.

The main battle armor was completely unable to eat on its own because the structure of its large jaw was too specialized, and the lower jaw, lower lip and other structures had been specialized into a hose structure connected to the mother's nest. Within a few days, it was already starving to death. everywhere.

The long-winged diver who used to be so powerful in the sky lost the assistance of the hydraulic ejection structure and the crane, and his majesty was no longer there. He could only squirm helplessly on the ground, flapping his hind wings, but could only lift up soil and vascular plants, and Further depleting physical strength and accelerating their death.

In just a few days, the chaos has evolved into a complete collapse. The hidden gene fragments in the body were activated, and these dead level individuals began to self-dissolve at the cellular level, turning into a pool of blood.

In the deep sea, the originally set "refuge" did not operate as expected, but operated in the same mechanical and sluggish manner.

The only ones that were not affected were those photosynthetic structures - after losing control, they followed the instincts set in the genetic sequence and began to proliferate, divide, and produce more daughter bodies.

At the same time, in the sea.

These liquid nutrients seeped into the earth, causing the lichens that had lost care to grow more densely. Dark green and gray-white tissues spread, and some even extended their roots toward the mother nest.

The same chaos also occurred in the sea. In the sea, highly specialized grades such as the fearless soldiers died one after another, and they also dissolved themselves and turned into nutrients for the growth of other creatures.

It seems that they are special. After absorbing a large amount of nutrients, these lichens are undergoing some unknown changes. But at this time, there are no workers to harvest and control them, so they have to be allowed to grow wildly.

Due to the existence of stinging cells, no creatures in the oceans of this era can eat them. Therefore, they can grow uncontrollably.

Lichens on land and photosynthetic structures in the sea carry out photosynthesis crazily, releasing large amounts of oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide. This seems to be a good thing, but everything depends on a balance. Once the balance is broken, the situation will change. It starts to get dangerous.

Over time, over time, and over time, the biota in the outside world is also changing. By chance again and again, the mixed-sea horseshoe crabs that dominated the oceans in the early Silurian period gradually declined, and the pterygoid horseshoe crabs began to rise. They walked out of the freshwater rivers where they originally lived, marched towards the ocean, and returned to the sea.

Also returning to the sea were scorpions, which were still aquatic species at this time. With their specialized chelicerae and pedipalps, they quickly took over part of the ecological niche of the horseshoe crab and transformed into a giant thunder scorpion that was more than one meter long. , and at the same time began to march on land.

In the dark, the fish rests on its laurels and continues to polish its jaws, waiting for an opportunity. Moreover, the proportion of fish in the bottom ecological niche has exceeded that of small plate-footed horseshoe crabs, and we are just waiting for an opportunity to reshuffle the deck.

In some sea areas where large pterygoid horseshoe crabs have not yet arrived due to various reasons, the appearance of a one- to two-meter-long blunt-toothed macrognathus represents the first time that fish have entered the apex predator ecological niche.

The poisonous poison in the west is called thunder and lightning, and the macrojaws in the east are trying to cause change. In such a crisis, the large pterygoid horseshoe crabs at the top of the food chain chose to continue to increase their size and polish the hardware to create a leather-like exoskeleton similar to shark shield scales. Structures such as scale-like protrusions have also begun to become more and more specialized.

But at this time, quantitative changes have accumulated into qualitative changes. The carbon dioxide content in the air has dropped to a very dangerous proportion, which is enough to cause harm to the environment. Serious impact.

The Earth's overall ambient temperature begins to decline as the levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide decline. In the polar regions, a large number of glaciers began to freeze, which further led to fatal consequences.

Sea levels began to fall, and seawater began to gradually recede around the world. A large number of areas that were originally shallow seas on the continental margin were exposed to the air. The late Silurian sea retreat finally arrived as scheduled.

For large pterygoid horseshoe crabs, this is undoubtedly fatal. The safer shallow seas along the continent where they molt and raise their young have disappeared, causing the decline of the pterygoid horseshoe crabs.

Time, entering the Devonian period. The remaining pterygoid horseshoe crabs had to start further specialization. The compound eyes of Horseshoe Crabs were specially adapted for night vision, making them a nocturnal predator.

In freshwater rivers that were less affected, the horseshoe crab continued to grow in size in a desperate attempt to evolve into the Rhine-Jeckel horseshoe crab, which may be the largest arthropod in history. At the same time, spiny-tailed horseshoe crabs have also evolved into giant Hibbert's horseshoe crabs to better pick up trash.

During this period, fish have been advancing rapidly, occupying the ecological niche that originally belonged to the plate-footed horseshoe crab. A new group of fish, called placoderms, began to emerge. Their well-developed mandibles allowed them to better pick up trash and kill other trash-picking creatures.

Among the placoderm fishes, a group called the joint-necked fishes began to move towards the ecological niche of the apex predator. In later generations, the famous Dunkleosteus will be born among them, with a flat and square jaw, setting the stage for the journey of future vertebrates. Remove obstacles.

At the same time, the ancestors of cartilaginous fish, ray-finned fish and lobe-finned fish began to differentiate. Among them, lobe-finned fish gradually began to land on land, setting foot on this land that was once soaked in blood.

When the first Tiktaalik stepped onto the solid ground with its fins, what appeared in front of it was a lush jungle of vascular plants and moss and lichen everywhere - it didn't know, and wouldn't know, that it was them , will trigger the next disaster.

(End of this chapter)