The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 31 Anomalocaris nest colony
  In the spy worker's field of vision, the sub-adult Ortholiths cut through the water and waves all the way, returning to the direction of their floating mother nest - based on the distance calculation, their mother nest has most likely been moved, and is among the entire group of Adult Ortholiths. It started to move after it was submerged, and now it has retreated a long distance.

Thinking about it, most of the soldiers were guarding a few foreign frogs, speeding up to catch up. The floating mother nest with a slower "speed" slowly follows behind and continues to produce individual soldiers.

In order to increase the capacity of the poison sac, the second-generation soldier sacrificially sacrifices part of its digestive capacity. It cannot survive alone without the supply of nutrient eggs from the nest group, and needs to accompany the mother's nest or the filtering mother.

However, there are a lot of foreign mother flies, only a few are left to push the floating mother nest, and most of the rest follow the soldiers.

While all this was happening, Lin Yi also made new moves in the trench to the north where the predatory Anomalocaris was previously discovered.

Originally, he planned to cultivate another pioneering female here and continue his exploration.

But now, with the floating mother nest, the sub-level of the pioneering mother has been temporarily eliminated by Lin Yi, and its role is shared between the nesting worker and the foreign filtering mother.

At present, the genetic sequence cannot be shared between broods in real time, but graptolite is highly prosperous in the Ordovician ocean, and it is enough to capture another one to absorb the genetic sequence. By integrating the gene fragment into the genetic sequence of the mother nest, a floating mother nest of similar shape can be reproduced.

Here, the floating mother nest of two foreign filter mothers and the pupae of the nesting worker are ready and waiting to set off.

At this time, the diameter of this new floating mother nest is only about two meters, and the feather-like filter feeding structure hanging down from its body is not very developed.

Lin Yi planned to wait for it to proliferate for a period of time and reach a size of about five or six meters before continuing to travel far and complete the unfinished business of pioneering the mother.

But on the first night when the floating nest was formed, an accident happened.

During this period, those predatory anomalocaridids still surfaced in the shallow sea every night and skimmed near the sea surface under the cover of darkness. Waving its curved appendages, it catches prey such as small horned rocks and alanda fish near the water surface.

Due to the battle with the Orthogonal Stone Nest Group on the other side, Lin Yi temporarily shelved his plan to explore the trench and did not take action against these strange shrimps.

As for the sickle limbs covered with blades and thorns, it was clear at first glance that these shrimps were not easy to mess with. These anomalies seemed to have a fairly low IQ, and they did not attack the soldiers rashly. During this period, they kept their peace.

But when another night fell and the figure covered with a black exoskeleton floated into the shallow sea as usual, the situation changed.

The blood-red dark red compound eyes of these predatory Heder shrimps scanned the surroundings as the eye stalks rotated, but it seemed that the compound eye of one of them discovered the existence of the floating mother nest, and a sudden change occurred.

The next second, all the nearby anomalocaridids seemed to have discovered the existence of the floating mother nest. The blade-shaped swimming feet on the side of the body flapped like wings, pushing the body to arc through the arcs with an grace and flexibility that was inconsistent with the ferocious appendages on the head. Lines, surrounding the floating mother nest from all directions.

The soldiers guarding the floating brood nest opened their scythes to face the approaching anomalies. They stood in front of them and shook the clusters of blade spines on their scythes, trying to make these anomalies retreat. But they didn't seem to be afraid at all. They opened a pair of claw-like appendages under their heads and rushed straight towards the soldiers. Seeing this, Lin Yi no longer held back his hand. The pair of sickle limbs of the soldier suddenly closed and pinched the oncoming strange shrimp.

Even if they swarm temporarily, these anomalocaridids are not very densely connected. Based on the intelligence they had shown before, which was not too low, one of them was killed and the rest would naturally disperse.

As an early pan-arthropod, the body segments of Anomalocaris are not completely arthropodized, and the exoskeleton of the body is not as strong as the original template of the soldier crab - the horsetail crab. It surged out, causing the strange shrimp to struggle painfully.

The sickle limb clamped hard, and the blade thorns cut through the flesh and blood with the movement of the sickle limb, and actually tore the soft body of the Anomalocaris in half.

The blade-like swimming legs on the half-remnant body were still swinging, but without the tail blade that maintained balance, it could only turn and fall like a stalled airplane.

But this time, the other strange shrimps did not disperse as Lin Yi expected. Instead, he immediately went crazy, opened his appendages, and suddenly rushed towards the remaining soldiers and the floating nest in the center, desperately facing the soldiers' wide-open sickle limbs.

Seeing this scene, Lin Yi felt bad. It is impossible for anomalocaridids to have such a high level of organization, let alone have the idea of ​​"revenge for their companions" that only social creatures have.

But now, with a large number of Anomalocaris reacting instantly at the same time, there is only one possibility - they are also a true social nest group!
  Subsequent actions further verified this. These strange shrimps actually form groups of two and cooperate secretly.

One uses the appendage under its head to clamp at the base of the soldier's sickle limb. The other one took the opportunity to go around Bing Hao's side, hooked its appendages on Bing Hao's body, and bit down hard with its mouth!

As the name suggests, the Archodontida has a radial mouthpart structure called a cone.

The mouth cone is composed of a circle of overlapping tooth plates and may be the hardest part of the entire Anomalocaris body. There are many three-dimensional fossils preserved in relief form in later generations.

It is speculated that these mouth cones can "bloom" outward as a whole, and then close together like drops of blood, decapitating small and medium-sized prey, or creating horrific scars on the bodies of large prey.

The mouth cones of these Anomalocaris are radiating, which further proves that they are a type of Hurd shrimp.

Binghao's exoskeleton, which was born out of the feather-winged horseshoe crab, could not compete with the hardest mouth of the Anomalocaris. He was immediately chewed out with a shocking scar, and blue horseshoe crab blood gushed out.

The anomaly shrimp that clamped the sickle limb of Binghao and was wrestling with Binghao took the opportunity to turn its sickle limb, opened its mouth cone wide, and put the entire head of Binghao into the mouth cone, then closed it like a drop of blood, and the interlocking teeth Ban immediately bit off Bing Hao's head!
  But more soldiers had already rushed to the scene with their tails swinging and two pairs of paddling feet. Without a numerical advantage, this kind of pairwise cooperation and mixed doubles tactics were no longer effective.

Instead, the soldiers cooperated in an orderly manner under the control of Lin Yi. The sickle limbs slashed at the softer bodies of the anomalies. The tissue fluid surged, and the shrimp group soon suffered heavy losses. Sections were chopped off by the sickle limbs. The remains of his body fell to the seabed, dragging a long trail of gushing tissue fluid.

But at this moment, the compound eyes of the workers mounted below the floating mother nest noticed that there was something sizable in the dark abyss, slowly rising!
  (End of this chapter)