Overlord: Rise of the Zerg

The reason why Zero wanted to designate an area near the mother nest to tame aphids instead of using reeds on the riverside to solve the problem was not complicated.

One is the issue of distance from the mother nest. There is a distance of tens of meters from the river to the mother nest. Carrying food from there in the future will consume a lot of labor costs for the ant colony.

The second issue is the quantity of food. On the grassland here, the number of weeds far exceeds the reeds by the river. If they can be bred on grass, it means that aphids can be domesticated anytime and anywhere on this grass, which means that the ant colony does not have to worry about food wherever it goes.

Of course, because they are closer to their southern nesting sites, the ant colonies there will be the first to tame aphids in the reeds along the river.

Zero asked the worker ants to place the surviving aphids and their eggs on the grass blades. For several days, Zero closely observed the group of tiny insects.

What makes Zero a little strange is that these aphids do not show any symptoms of discomfort on the grass blades, but live very leisurely. Those eggs also hatched one after another, and they even laid eggs again during this period.

"It seems that aphids cannot survive on the grass, so why haven't I found them on the grass blades before?" Zero is a little strange. According to the habits of aphids, as long as they can survive, they will not let go of such a large area of ​​fat. Area.

But soon, Zero found the answer.

Flying ants on the outskirts of the ant colony reported the discovery of several green bugs with wings that were rarely seen before.

This time Zero did not order the ants to swarm over and turn them into food for the ant colony, but let them in deliberately.

Because the ants rarely encountered this kind of bug during their previous hunting process, but now they are coming here with great purpose. There must be something attracting them.

The most likely cause is these rapidly reproducing aphids.

Sure enough, these green bugs with transparent wings came straight to the grassland where aphids lived as if they were equipped with radars. After landing, they waved their forelimbs and mouthparts without saying a word to target the aphids lying on the leaves. A massacre was carried out.

"This must be a lacewing, right? Is this the reason why aphids don't breed here?" Zero recognized this insect, which explained the reason why aphids did not live in the grass, but then came another question.

"Then why can they survive on reeds? Are there no lacewings there?"

"Perhaps, there may be natural enemies of lacewings there." Without being entangled in this issue, Zero quickly ordered the ant colony to come forward and clean up the slaughtering lacewings, turning them into piles in the ant nest. food.

After figuring out the reason, Zero no longer hesitated. The ant army quickly dispatched. In addition to leaving enough aphids to breed in the southern nest, they moved all the aphids that could be seen in the field of vision to the grass near the ant nest.

Soon, the group of aphids began to survive and reproduce. They can lay eggs in four or five days, and the eggs will hatch in two or three days. This reproduction rate would put even an ant colony to shame.

This is certainly a good thing for Zero, though.

With the help of the ants, in just half a month, the aphids have almost covered the grassland in the ant colony's sphere of influence.

The ant colonies helped them eliminate their natural enemies, and the non-threatening grassland became a paradise for aphids.

They wantonly absorb the sap from the grass blades and reproduce rapidly, generation after generation.

However, the ant colony did not clean up the lacewings outside their sphere of influence, and the aphids and ant colonies did not care about the aphids that went there, allowing them to survive on their own.

But for the interior surrounded by the first batch of separate nests, faced with the aphids that have almost covered the entire grassland and reproduced wantonly, in order to prevent them from destroying all the grassland and thus destroying Zero's plan, the ant colony has to control their density. and quantity are strictly controlled. The number of aphids on each blade of grass is not allowed to exceed ten. This is the basis for ensuring the survival of the grass blades and continuously providing nutrition for the aphids.

Once this number is exceeded, the ant colonies will go out in large numbers to kill the excess aphids and turn them into their own food.

In addition to this purely carnivorous breeding, the ant colony also specially separates worker ants to "graze" the aphids.

After aphids absorb the sap from grass leaves, they produce honeydew containing a large amount of sugar. This honeydew is also one of the most important goals of ants in raising aphids.

For a long period of time in the future, as long as there is grass in the ant colony's sphere of influence, all areas will be aphid farms and pastures for the ant colony.

Aphids have no choice but to accept the ants that are much larger than themselves.

On each leaf are worker ants that graze aphids, waiting for them to produce honeydew before transporting it back to the ant nest.

In order to speed up their output, ants sometimes beat their bodies with their forelimbs to urge them.

At the same time, under Zero's instruction, the ant colonies carried out special cleaning of aphids that produced slowly or were small in size. This is also Zero's attempt. Aphids reproduce so quickly, which means their gene transmission cycle is very short.

Therefore, Lingxiang selectively forces aphids to evolve in the direction they need through this artificial selection, eliminating the poor and choosing the best.

Of course, this is just an attempt, and there is no way to determine whether it will succeed. I can only say that I will try my best. If it succeeds naturally, the ant colony will get a better and better food source. It doesn't matter if you don't succeed, this attempt will not cause any damage to the ant colony.

Zero also thought about using the same method on earthworms, but compared to aphids, the reproduction speed of earthworms is too slow, and it would take years to see the effect.

Of course, it is still worth trying, through this kind of directional artificial selection, to guide the offspring of earthworms in the direction that the ant colony needs.

For example, eat well and be lazy about cooking, stop running away, focus on growing fat, etc.

This has already begun after the construction of the earthworm acclimation farm, but because the number of earthworms is too small. Therefore, we cannot select by killing them, we can only domesticate them from generation to generation as time goes by.

If one day, the ant colony finds a way to breed earthworms in large quantities without incurring too much cost, it will no longer have to be so cautious. Based on a large number of samples, there will always be a few unique earthworms that are delicious, lazy and unwilling to move. , selectively leaving them to combine and lay eggs, killing other earthworms, thus denying them the chance to leave offspring.

Through this selective condition from generation to generation, they are forced to evolve in the direction of a qualified food provider.

Please collect! ! Asking for a monthly ticket! !