Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 22 Conditioning in Earthworms

Time passed day by day, and the hot summer gradually came to an end.

In the middle of the 30 holes exposed by the aphids on the grass, the seedlings of the fruit trees have grown to a height of more than [-] centimeters, and the branches have become much thicker.In zero vision, their root systems that reach into the ground are longer than those above ground.

They sway their bodies in the wind, absorbing the organic fertilizer buried in their roots by the ants. Even though it is the end of summer, they are still pumping new leaves upward.

As for the original fruit tree, it has also produced new fruits. Compared with last year, its size has become larger, and there are many more large and small fruits hanging on the crown of the tree.

The ant colony has already penetrated the underground passage connecting the second ring to the first ring, including the one that crosses the river and connects to the south bank.

At present, the ants are nervously carrying out the construction of the second stage of the tunnel connecting the nests of the second ring road. This part of the project is even more massive, but the number of ants in the ant colony has long been different from what it used to be. Now, the number of ants in the entire ant colony has reached Of the [-] people, even if a considerable part were to be allocated to herding aphids and taking care of the ant nests, the construction of this part would be completed in autumn.

The breeding of aphids and earthworms has never stopped. As time goes by, due to the gradual aging of the grass leaves, the aphids can no longer easily obtain the juice of the plants, which directly leads to a sharp decrease in the production of honeydew. No matter how much the grazing ants slapped them, it didn't help.

At the same time, their reproduction speed also began to decline. Originally, a generation could be reproduced in seven days at the slowest, but now it takes half a month to complete the reproduction.

The reduction in the production efficiency of aphids has drastically reduced the proportion that originally accounted for more than [-]% of the daily consumption of ant colonies to less than [-]%.

This reduction in efficiency is beyond the control of the ants, but fortunately, the ant colony has already completed the collection of food for the winter and is still piling up.Moreover, the coming autumn is also a harvest season, and the ant colony can find a lot of food by itself.

The good news is that there has been some progress in the selection of aphids. Those heat-resistant aphids have been screened by ants for generations, and the proportion of heat-tolerant aphids in their offspring is increasing at a very slow rate. , gradually accounted for about 20.00% of its offspring.

If it weren't for the slowdown of aphid reproduction in autumn, this ratio could continue to expand.

As for the targeted selection of their output efficiency and body size, it is still in progress. At present, the effect is not obvious. The larvae bred by aphids that are fat and have high output efficiency are still very random. law.

Zero guessing that this might be due to the fact that the aphids' genes controlling these two parts are much more complex than those for heat tolerance.

But despite this, the ants are still working tirelessly on this work.

The preliminary results of the heat tolerance experiment have proved the feasibility of this kind of breeding, and the ants are not doing useless work!
Reaching this conclusion made Zero very excited.

While the seed selection and breeding work on the aphid side has initially achieved results, good news has also come from the earthworm domestication field.

After a long period of punitive attacks by the ant colony on earthworms burrowing into the ground and fleeing, several adult earthworms gradually formed a conditioned reflex.

As long as the ants get close, they will stop moving. At the same time, with the ants staring at them nearby, this group of earthworms will not dare to burrow into the ground in an attempt to escape.

Zero has done experiments on purpose. When guarded by ants, this group of earthworms appears to be very honest, but once Zero withdraws some of the ants, they obviously become restless, but when these ants approach, they will become more stable again. Be honest.

If Zero withdrew all the ants, the earthworms would immediately start trying to escape.

Although there is basically no progress in the selective breeding of earthworms' offspring due to the long breeding period of earthworms, the achievements so far are undoubtedly good news.

Even if this situation is to be achieved, every domesticated earthworm needs to be taught to attack for several months, Zero still thinks it is worth it.

On the one hand, the "educated" earthworms can save a large number of guard ants, which is equivalent to adding a new batch of labor to the ant colony.

On the other hand, the lifespan of earthworms can generally reach about six years, and ant colonies have enough time to gradually domesticate them.

In addition, Zero also found that the effect of this kind of "education" on earthworm larvae seems to be much better, but it is only an example at present and remains to be seen.If this is the case, it is undoubtedly better news for the ant colony.

Of course, the most important thing is that this "submission" of earthworms is a good start for the ant colony to completely domesticate them.

Zero has already begun to try to combine the earthworms that have undergone this initial domestication to see if their offspring will be different, but also because of the earthworm reproductive cycle, their larvae are still in the form of eggs.

After the initial results, Zero immediately ordered the ants to build a large-scale similar domestication field in all the ant nests.

He plans to use the power of the entire ant colony to quickly complete the domestication of a large number of earthworms, even if it delays the autumn foraging activities of some ant colonies.

The food accumulated in the ant nest is enough for the current number of ants to eat until next summer, so for Zero, who is not planning to start expanding again before next spring, the demand for food in the short term is not so urgent, but it is related to Earthworm domestication is more important for the long-term plan of the ant colony.

Once this kind of domestication is completed on a large scale, the ant colony can obtain a large amount of food through minimal labor. After all, earthworms only need humus food to survive, and this kind of thing abounds in the grassland.

In the following time, the entire autumn and winter will be quietly passed by the ant colonies in the construction of the underground transportation network and the construction of new earthworm domestication farms. The underground was completed, and at the same time, the passage from the "Second Ring" to the "First Ring" has also been completely completed.

It is worth mentioning that the fruit tree produced another [-] fruits, and their seeds were scattered and planted on the grass near the ant nest by the zero-directed ants. In the coming year, some of them will be planted again. Germinate, grow seedlings.

More and more earthworms were moved from the original natural breeding room to the newly-built domestication field for a three-month domestication. At the same time, more fields were being constructed underground, and grains of sand were moved out by ants. The ground was piled up into small mounds.

"The future is promising!" Zero thought excitedly.

　Ask for tickets and collect them every day! !
　　
　
(End of this chapter)