Time passes day by day, and the hot summer is gradually coming to an end.

The ten clearings cleared by the ants driven by the aphids on the grass were exposed in the center of about one meter of open space. The seedlings of the fruit trees had grown to more than thirty centimeters in height, and their branches were much thicker. In Zero's field of vision, they stretched into the underground root system.

It’s longer than the part on the ground.

They sway their bodies in the wind, fully absorbing the organic fertilizer that the ants have buried in their roots. Even though it is late summer, they are still sending 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 also many more large and small fruits hanging on the crown of the tree.
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The underground passage connecting the ant colony from the second ring to the first ring has been connected, including the one across the river to the south bank.

Currently, the ants are intensively carrying out the second phase of construction of the passages connecting the nests in the Second Ring Road. This part of the project is even larger, but the number of ant colonies has long been different. Now, the number of ants in the entire ant colony has reached

Even if a considerable portion of the 80,000 people have to be dedicated to tending aphids and taking care of ant nests, this part of the construction will be completed in the autumn.

The breeding of aphids and earthworms has never stopped. As time goes by, as the grass leaves gradually age, the aphids can no longer easily obtain the sap of the plants, which directly leads to a sharp reduction in the production of honeydew.

No matter how hard you beat the grazing ants, it won't help.

At the same time, their reproduction speed has also begun to decline. Originally, they could reproduce one generation in as little as seven days, but now it takes half a month to complete reproduction.

The reduction in aphid production efficiency has caused the proportion that originally accounted for more than 80% of the ant colony's daily consumption to drop sharply to less than 40%.

This decrease 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 upcoming autumn is also a harvest season, and the ant colony can do this on its own.

Can find a lot of food.

The good news is that there has been some progress in the selection of aphids. Those heat-resistant aphids have been selected by ants for generations, and the proportion of heat-resistant aphids among their descendants is increasing at a very slow rate.

, gradually accounted for about 20% of his descendants.

If autumn was not approaching and the reproduction rate of aphids was not slowed down, this proportion could continue to expand.

As for the targeted selection of their production efficiency and body size, it is still in progress. At present, the effect is not obvious. The larvae reproduced by aphids that are fat and have high production efficiency are still extremely random. There is nothing

Rules.

There is no guess that this situation may be because the genes that control these two parts of aphids are much more complex than the genes for heat tolerance.

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

The preliminary results of the heat tolerance experiment have proven the feasibility of this kind of breeding. The ants are not doing wasted work!

Coming to this conclusion makes Zero feel very excited.

While the selection and breeding work on aphids has initially yielded results, good news has also come from the earthworm domestication farm.

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

As long as the ants are close, they will stop moving. At the same time, with the ants nearby staring at them, the group of earthworms will not dare to drill into the ground and try to escape.

Zero specially conducted an experiment. When there were ants guarding them, this group of earthworms appeared to be very honest. However, once Zero removed some of the ants, they became obviously restless. But when these ants came close, they would become again.

Be honest.

If Zero removes all the ants, the earthworms will immediately start trying to escape.

Although there has been basically no progress in the selective cultivation of earthworm offspring due to the long breeding period of earthworms, the achievements achieved so far are undoubtedly good news.

Even if you want to achieve this situation, you need to educate each domesticated earthworm for several months to attack, Zero still thinks it is worth it.

On the one hand, earthworms that have undergone this kind of "education" can save a large number of guard ants, which is equivalent to adding a new batch of labor force to the ant colony.

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

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

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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 begun to try to combine the earthworms that have undergone this initial domestication to see if their offspring will be different. However, due to the earthworm reproduction cycle, their larvae are still in the form of eggs.

After the initial results were achieved, Zero immediately ordered the ants to build similar taming grounds on a large scale in all ant nests.

He is prepared to use the power of the entire ant colony to quickly tame a large number of earthworms, even if it means delaying 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. Therefore, for Zero, who is not planning to start expansion again before next spring, the demand for food in the short term is not that urgent, but 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 colonies will be able to obtain a large amount of food with minimal labor. After all, earthworms only need humus food to survive, and this kind of food can be found everywhere on the grassland.

In the following time, the entire autumn and winter passed quietly in the busy work of the ant colony building underground transportation networks and new earthworm acclimation fields. A large number of large or small acclimation fields of different shapes were located throughout the ant colony.

The underground has been completed, and the passage connecting the "Second Ring Road" to the "First Ring Road" has also been completely completed.

It is worth mentioning that the fruit tree once again produced thirty fruits, and their seeds were also scattered on the grass near the ant nest by the ants under Zero Command. Wait until next year, some of them will be planted again

Germinate, grow seedlings.

More and more earthworms were moved from their original natural breeding rooms to the newly built acclimation field for three months. At the same time, more sites were being constructed intensively underground, and grains of sand were moved out by the ants.

The ground is piled up into small mounds.
Chapter completed!