Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 21 Heat Tolerance Experiment of Aphids

After the second round of expansion, the number of ant colonies began to expand rapidly again, and correspondingly, Zero's field of vision became wider.

It is roughly bounded by the branch nest connection line formed by the first expansion, which is called the first ring by Zero, and the new branch nest created by the second expansion is called the second ring.Within the range of the first ring, Zero already has all the vision, and outside this range, there are also a large number of sporadic vision embellishments.

Time flies, and the weather has turned hot in a blink of an eye. More and more ant colonies have crawled out of their nests, contributing their own strength to the development of the ant colony.

The food problem is still the main contradiction that plagues the development of ant colonies, but this contradiction is not prominent until the ant colony does not completely occupy the living space.

However, without long-term considerations, there must be near-term worries. With the rapid development of ant colonies, this problem is bound to gradually become prominent.

So Zero has been thinking about this problem.

Grazing aphids is undoubtedly a very good direction. Today, aphids have almost covered the sphere of influence occupied by ant colonies, and even the pastures of ant colonies are still expanding outwards.

At its peak, the entire aphid pasture can bear more than [-]% of the food consumption of the ant colony, which is the undisputed pillar industry of the ant colony.

Of course, while the aphids are grazing, the ant colony is not idle. The ants who have no grazing tasks are still attacking in all directions, hunting for food, so that the ants have almost prepared the food they need for the winter just after the beginning of summer. , of course, is limited to the current population size.

The weather is getting hotter and hotter, and the output efficiency of Zero Keen's developing aphids also begins to decrease slowly with the increase of temperature.

The grass blades are no longer as tender as in spring, and the temperature is no longer as suitable as before. Many aphids have begun to hide on the back of the grass blades, and only a few still live on the front.

This attracted Zero's attention. He remembered his idea of ​​artificially adjusting the evolution direction of the ant colony. Isn't this a ready-made experimental sample?
It is a good research direction to remove the inferior and save the superior for aphids. The grazing ant colonies have been doing this before. They kill the aphids with low output efficiency as food, and domesticate the fat and extremely high-output aphids to reproduce. offspring, and then make the same selection in their next generation.

Of course, the effect of this selection cannot be seen in just a few months, but this kind of experiment does not actually affect the overall output of aphids, because in the entire fixed area, the ant colony needs to retain The number of aphids is fixed.

They would have cleaned up most of the offspring of the aphids to ensure the normal survival of the grass, but they did not kill the aphids randomly, but selectively killed the aphids.

The selection of aphids with heat tolerance is not the same, because most aphids like to live in the shade on the back of the leaves, and only a few can face the hot sun.

If these heat-labile aphids are removed, the benefits of ant colony grazing will inevitably be lost.

In order not to affect the ants' grazing plan, the experiment on the heat tolerance of the aphids was only carried out in a small area. He chose a grassland of about one square meter and ordered the ant colony to clean up all the aphids that were afraid of heat, leaving only one of them. Heat-tolerant, and a steady stream of heat-tolerant aphids are transported from other places.

Only in this area, all offspring of these aphids that do not have heat tolerance will be killed, leaving only those that meet the zero requirements to reproduce again.

The two selection experiments on aphids can be regarded as a rehearsal before the human-intervention evolution of ant colonies. The same is true for the domestication of earthworms, but this kind of experiment is difficult to be effective in a short period of time.

If it can indeed achieve the desired effect, then Zero will start to carry out this kind of experiment in the ant colony to selectively evolve the ant species he needs.

Unless this kind of experiment is a race with extremely fast reproduction speed, it is absolutely difficult to see the effect in the short term. The most promising one is aphids, but even under the current environment, it still takes about seven days for them to reproduce one generation.

In addition to the aphids, another project that Zero is concerned about - the underground connecting passage between the second ring and the first ring has also greatly increased the construction progress with the recovery of the number of ant colonies in the first ring and the development of the second ring disposal nest .

It is estimated that by next month, most of the underground passages from the first ring to the second ring will be able to pass through. Among them, the most difficult location is the underground passage connecting the ant nests on the south bank of the river. Because of the river, the ants must first dig enough Only the depth can ensure the firmness of the channel, and it is impossible to build a channel that meets the zero requirements in the mud.

This has caused a lot of trouble for the worker ants who are responsible for the work, so that the progress of this work is very slow.

But no matter how slow the progress is, with the blessing of the number of ant colonies, as long as it can be realized, it is only a matter of time, and Zero is very sure of this.

Except for the channel to communicate with the southern branch nest, the other directions are relatively smooth, and the progress is normal.

Same as the first expansion, after connecting with the first ring, these branch nests will also establish underground passages among each other, and finally form a spider web-like underground structure, becoming a real "second ring".

Food is sufficient at present. Although there may be hidden worries in the future, Zero is already planning the next round of expansion. This plan will start only when the "Second Ring" is truly formed.

However, that should be an autumn thing.

It is also worth mentioning that the ten fruit tree saplings that grew out in spring, under the careful care of the ant colony using earthworms and organic fertilizers, have pulled out their branches and grown into small saplings more than ten centimeters high. Compared with the generally taller weeds around them, they still looked short, but this speed already made Zero very satisfied.

The small fruit tree that came from nowhere on the mound also sprouted new branches and leaves this year. Obviously, it is just a fruit seedling that has just matured and bears fruit, and there is still a lot of room for growth.

After a while, it will bloom and bear fruit again, which also means that another batch of seeds of fruit trees will be produced.

Zero is very happy to do this kind of planting, which can satisfy his heart of transforming nature to a great extent.

Just imagine, in a few years or more than ten years, there will be hundreds of fruit trees on this land. At that time, the fruits that fall every year can feed a large number of ants.

Of course, maybe by that time, the ant colonies no longer need the fruits produced by these fruit trees, but this still does not affect Zero's decision now.

Who can say what will happen a few years or even ten years later?Maybe the ant colony will develop very well, and maybe it will also encounter unknown risks and decline. No one can predict it. The most important thing is to do the current thing well.

(End of this chapter)