The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 183 Landing on the Beach

The fearless soldiers, accompanied by a large number of ordinary soldiers around them, cleared a road. Behind them, the protagonist of this landing slowly appeared.

A huge body nearly twenty meters long, as well as an exoskeleton with a special luster. It's just that there is no pair of ferocious sickle limbs covered with triangular pyramid-shaped spines. Instead, there are three pairs of slender appendages with fine filter-feeding structures - the pioneering female.

Nowadays, the development motherboard that has been updated to the third generation has been greatly strengthened in all aspects. It has also made many detailed structural improvements and integrated some functions that originally belonged to other grades.

But at this time, these are not the key points. The most important thing is that at this time, these pioneering mother flies are floating on the water as a whole, and their backs are crowded with two-meter-long ant-shaped giant insects - yes Wild-toothed Saw Ant.

Compared with hundreds of millions of years ago, the appearance of the Saw Ant has not changed much, except that its size has increased to two meters, its exoskeleton also uses a mineral structure, which is stronger, and its upper jaw and claws are more lethal.

Moreover, the respiratory systems of this group of saw-toothed saw ants are amphibious book lungs, which are produced from the mother nest in the water and mounted on the back of the pioneer mother in preparation for beaching.

The five pairs of paddling legs of the pioneer mother were swinging, and the water-jet propulsion system was operating at full strength, pushing the huge body straight onto the beach, leaving several deep marks on the flat sand specially selected by Lin Yi.

Immediately, the crazy-toothed saw ants on their backs moved their six limbs, jumped off the back of the pioneer mother, and walked on the fine waves on the beach to the top of the coast. In the compound eyes, the dense fern forest was exceptionally green.

The sound of pioneering mother grasshoppers rushing onto the beach scared off many huge insects with astonishing wingspans. At this time, they occupied the ecological niche of later generations of birds, flapping their wings in panic and circling in the sky, and from time to time they made bursts of chitin friction. Neighing.

These are real insects of the order Erythroptera and Archaeodactyloptera, and it is not known what their relationship is with the Archaeodactyloptera and other ranks of the terrestrial arthropod nests at that time.

At this time, a few unlucky Acroptera insects were caught, torn apart, and sent into the mouth of the flying reconnaissance insect.

In addition, the new flying reconnaissance frog also has three pairs of short chelicerae on the sides of the mouth similar to the old version of the pioneering mother frog. It can directly pick up other creatures in the air and tear them apart to collect genetic sequences.

But then, several huge figures flapped their hind wings and rushed into the frightened flying insects like hawks and falcons rushing into a flock of pigeons. Their lute-shaped bodies were still stained with some water stains - it was an improved version of flying reconnaissance. scorpion.

After replenishing some nutrients, the flying reconnaissance turtle tore off the opponent's wings with its chelicerae, and threw its body casually to the ground. A mad-toothed saw ant immediately stepped forward to catch it, and threw it into the sea with its backhand. The worker then pops it into the mouth and extracts the genetic sequence.

These flying reconnaissance birds have a wingspan of up to two meters and have two compound eyes located above the front of the head and a middle eye located below the front of the head, which can better achieve the purpose of detection.

It's just pitiful for this unknown giant insect. Before it died, it was passed through several hands like a ball before it completely ushered in the end of its life.

The swarm of saw-toothed saw ants spread out and defended nearby. Immediately, a large number of workers followed behind the pioneer mother, swung their paddling feet and began to wash the beach.

Now, after the Gonghao's appendage has a double-layer shell and a matching hydraulic-fiber hybrid muscle system, it can also swing its paddling feet to move on the coastal tidal flats, achieving amphibious behavior in a sense.

Of course, this is only a stop-gap measure when landing on the beach. Under normal circumstances, special land engineering is still required. But the fact that the planter can be used on both land and water does not mean that the pioneering mother can also survive on land. With the huge size and heavy exoskeleton of the current third-generation pioneer mother, once it loses the buoyancy of water, it is destined to die.

However, when Lin Yi controlled them to wash up on the beach, he never thought about letting them return to the sea alive. Under his control, these pioneering female frogs quickly stopped moving, and their bodies and exoskeletons gradually began to dissolve.

Obviously, it is pupating in the direction of the mother nest, and with the huge size of the three generations of pioneering mother flies, the functions of the terrestrial mother nest that can be pupated are also quite complete, and can directly start producing grades such as Saw Ants.

The site was quickly cleared, and under the brutal swarm of saw-toothed ants, a large number of strange land animals were not missed, all of which became Lin Yi's genetic sequence reserve.

The main activities near the coast are all kinds of strange arthropods, such as true horned spiders, ancient spiders, lung scorpions, arthrothoracic insects, etc.

Among them, there were also a small number of lizard-like creatures mixed in - but then, the genetic sequence showed that they already had zygomatic arches and special temporal foramen structures, proving that they were an early synapsid species, which was later mammals. A close relative, possibly even a direct ancestor.

But at this time, these had nothing to do with Lin Yi, and he would not have the slightest pity because the other party was a close relative of his ancestor, so he would kill them all and absorb the genetic sequence.

The lizard-like Synapsida species prove that the current time is probably from the late Carboniferous to the early Permian.

After cleaning up the nearby wild life, the new terrestrial mother nest has also pupated and is ready to start the production of grade individuals.

The new generation of terrestrial nests are also larger and have a root-like structure, which can better take root in the soil and fix their body shape. And some new functional structures are also being developed.

The first thing produced was a large number of land-based industries. The new generation of land workers is slightly smaller than the wild-water workers, about 1.5 meters long, but their wider bodies make them similar in size to the wild-toothed saw ants.

Land and sea insects also have mineral-containing exoskeletons and chelicera structures, which are enough to cut through some brittle rocks. And also has the ability to extract minerals from food.

However, this time, the lichens originally planted may no longer be found. Even if they can be found, the nutrients they provide can no longer meet the current needs of the nest colony. Therefore, Lin Yi must develop a new way to collect nutrients on land more efficiently, rather than relying entirely on the ocean's supply.

With the current gene editing capabilities of the nest, it is not difficult to develop photosynthetic structures on land, but Lin Yi is not satisfied with this. What he wants is a more advanced autotrophic structure.

This also means that a crazy plan that Lin Yi could not even imagine before has been put on the agenda - to completely integrate the genetic sequences of plants and animals and develop a brand new one that can eliminate the need to obtain chloroplasts from the outside world. , a photosynthetic structure that truly turns chloroplasts into part of itself!

(End of this chapter)