The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 54 Studying the Mother Grasshopper
  A pair of claws of Gong Hao clamped hard on a pair of arms and legs of a starfish, and the other pair of claws clamped hard on the base of the arms and legs.

The flesh and blood tissue was torn apart, and one arm and foot was completely torn off. But soon, at the break, the flesh and blood squirmed, and a shrunken starfish shape slowly emerged.

If Lin Yi's thoughts could be materialized, then a string of ellipses would definitely appear above Gong Hao's head. He had actually forgotten that these starfish's regeneration abilities were extremely outrageous.

Thinking about it, a scorpion scorpion slowly swam down from above under his control, opened its scythe limbs, and clamped the newly split eyed starfish. The scorpion tail was raised upwards, and the stinger and tail clip cooperated to clamp Toxins are injected into the starfish's body.

At this time, the starfish finally slowly lost its vitality. Immediately afterwards, Gonghao once again began to tear and cut it on the spot with his chelicerae, tearing it into pieces again.

This time, it finally stopped regenerating and was allowed to be torn apart by the claws of the worker. The worker also swung his paddling feet, preparing to take him to his nest.

Originally, he planned to continue to let the floating brood fill the vesicles with water and fall to the seabed, but considering that these starfish could chew the shell of the brood, he decided to keep the brood suspended in the upper water just in case.

And something surprising happened to Lin Yi. After this strange starfish with eyeballs was torn to death, the other starfish around him seemed to sense something, and their tube feet squirmed and fled away.

But with the speed of a starfish, how could it escape from a soldier with two pairs of paddling feet and a flat tail segment? It was soon caught up, clamped with its sickle limbs, injected with venom, and killed.

Soon, there was only one starfish left among the dozen or so starfish on the floating nest of the scorpion, and this one was also stabbed into the body by the stinger on the scorpion's tail and was about to inject venom.

But suddenly, at the mother's nest, the analysis of the genetic sequence came out, causing Lin Yi to stop the soldier's movement and retract his tail spine.

The gene sequence has not yet been analyzed, but some fragments have been presented to Lin Yi through the mother's nest - those are gene fragments similar to the mother's nest!
  More gene fragments have also been analyzed, which also include structures similar to synaptic structures, but they seem to be versions that are more suitable for their original nervous system and are somewhat different from those of Lin Yi's nest individuals.

All this shows that these starfish formed a primitive nest group, but they did not seem to have a mother nest. The proliferation relied on direct division rather than the production of the mother nest.

But thinking that they were echinoderms, Lin Yi suddenly smiled with relief - if he could do it now. Their evolution history, which they do not recognize their relatives, has shown that there is nothing that these things cannot control.

This reminded Lin Yi of the strange object found in the middle of the Dikla crater - in a sense, it looked like a single mother nest without a nest group, which corresponded to these starfish.

The main reason why Lin Yi spared this starfish's life was that the genetic sequences of these starfish could be copied in large quantities for analysis by the mother nest.

If they really have similar functions to the mother's nest, they can play the same role as the mother's nest gene sequence sample, allowing Lin Yi to take his ability to edit the mother's nest gene sequence to a higher level.

Thinking about it, Lin Yi came up with an idea and began to analyze the gene sequence related to the mother's nest, preparing to produce a brand new special individual.

The new individual uses the second-generation pioneer mother as a basic template, and undergoes large-scale modifications to its internal organs. A large sac-like structure is installed above the chest cavity for it to accommodate other organisms.

The inner wall of the capsule-like structure is specially made of exoskeleton components of the composite armor structure. At the same time, the inner wall of some areas has compound eye-shaped protrusions, and what is housed inside is not a visual organ, but a brand-new structure - a light-emitting organ! The genetic sequence of the illuminator comes from the phosphorite. To be precise, it was an organism attached to the shell of the hornstone - not a microorganism, but a small attached organism that was similar to a barnacle in later generations, but Lin Yi couldn't name it.

At the same time, in order to make the light emitter work, Lin Yi specially pulled the optic nerve from the head of the pioneer mother and connected it to a compound eye located inside the shell.

The compound eye structure is derived from the night vision compound eyes of Anomalocaris, which sacrifices a high refresh rate in exchange for the ability to see in low-light environments. Allowing it to see the internal objects clearly under the weak fluorescence emitted by the light-emitting organ.

At the same time, after wrapping the book gills into the body, Lin Yi reversely replaced part of the book gills with appendages, so that the abdominal cavity of this research female has a chelicera structure similar to that of a workhorse, making it more convenient to study the internal structure. individual.

There is a larger opening underneath the abdominal cavity for delivering targets into the body. At the same time, there are smaller openings inside, and one end is even connected to the ovary, which can directly produce nutritious eggs.

After some editing, one such research female began to give birth at the nearest pupal sac mother location.

During the period of giving birth, Lin Yi thought about it and decided to let it stay in the second-generation pioneer mother's barn and transport it back to the mother's nest.

After a battle, the number of micronized torpedo flies was somewhat lost. After squeezing them in again, a small space was freed up next to a second-generation pioneer female fly.

Fortunately, when Lin Yi designed the second-generation development farm, he had prepared an opening for it that could accommodate workers' entry and exit. Gong Hao directly used his chelicerae to hold the last remaining starfish and stuffed it directly into the gana barn.

The workers dispersed again to search. After confirming that there was no threat, the floating nest filled the vesicle with water under his control and slowly lowered toward the seabed.

The corpses of the soldier and the snail, the scavengers attracted by the corpses, and the most critical harvest - the remains of the floating nest of the snail and the remains of the killed starfish, were all cut up by the workers. into the holes on the surface of the floating nest.

The other two battlefields were a bit lackluster. No strange creatures like this starfish were found. Only trilobites, short-winged horseshoe crabs, Sakaban turtles and other familiar benthic species ate the remains of creatures that fell to the seabed. .

When the workers controlled by Lin Yikuo arrived, they naturally massacred these garbage collectors indiscriminately.

Those who can be killed will be killed on the spot, and those with stacked armor will be killed on the spot if the armor cannot be broken open by the soldiers. If that doesn't work, there are behemoths like the fearless soldiers swimming above. Even the Overlord and other giant insects will be infuriated on the spot. .

The food remains were quickly swept away, which represented another attack by the Straight-Helical Stone Nest Group that was successfully defeated by Lin Yi.

After this battle, the positions of the two sides completely changed. The appearance of the fearless soldiers gave Lin Yi the upper hand. He continued to passively wait for the opponent to come and die. It was better to take the initiative and find the remaining Straight Spiral Stone Nest Group hunting team. position and gradually kill them.

(End of this chapter)