How the Zergs were Made

Chapter 61 Vitality

Hogu changed the planet, and as a result, the ocean appeared again, and some things hidden under the ice were revealed in Hogu's vision.

A vast land...

According to Huogu's rough estimate of the area, it probably occupies 50% of the total area of ​​the entire planet.

Huogu could probably guess the cause of the formation, it was the result of the frequent volcanic movements actively created by Shang Ming.

Heating the land is extremely troublesome, because the main part of the land environment is not water, but air, which means that the hive cannot directly absorb water from the surrounding environment.

You know, whether it is each individual cell or heating work, water is inseparable.

Fortunately, there is still a way to solve this problem. A concave terrain is planed in the area occupied by the hive to store water, so that the entire hive can perform normal heating work.

The water acquisition channel is to draw from the ocean, use pipelines to span several kilometers for long-distance transportation, and natural precipitation after the planet's climate recovers.

Of course, the most important thing is the first one, which is the main source of water for the mainland hives. The continent is too large, so the ocean climate cannot penetrate deep into the continent, and there is no way for natural rainfall.

It can be predicted that after a period of time, when the water in the continent's soil is gradually evaporated by Hogu, it will become a desolate desert.

But these don't matter to Huo Gu now, he is no longer human, so naturally it is impossible to think about problems from a human point of view.

With a time span of tens of millions of years, sooner or later, this giant continent will split due to thermal circulation deep underground, just like those continents on the earth, and after that, the desert in the central area of ​​the continent will also It will enter the range of marine climate and will naturally be transformed back into fertile soil.

What really caught Huo Gu's heart was something else, the microbes that were scattered in the beginning.

Not long after those microbes spread out, the brutal ecological competition began.

At first, autotrophs and heterotrophs were equal in number, but in order to obtain nutrients, heterotrophs launched a large-scale attack on autotrophs.

The conclusion is self-evident, the heterotrophs absolutely crushed and devoured most of the autotrophic microorganisms, and only a few managed to escape and survive.

At this time, the mindless heterotrophic microorganisms naturally don't think about sustainable development. As long as they accumulate enough biomass, they will immediately reproduce and split into new individuals.

However, due to the sharp decline in the number of autotrophs, the targets of heterotrophic microorganisms had to be shifted to other heterotrophic microorganisms, so the second microbial war began, heterotrophic versus heterotrophic.

Survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest, the failed heterotrophic type will be driven farther away like the previous autotrophic type, and the winner of the war will be eligible to remain in the original position.

And then the third time, the fourth time, the fifth time...

Life is in this situation, when better genes are screened out, the survivors of the microorganisms in the war will become more aggressive and more easily kill other microorganisms.

So, is there absolutely no way out for those losers in the microbial war? Not really.

After the first microbial war, autotrophic microorganisms fled to a place far from the microbial battlefield and thrived.

Without the suppression of the natural enemy of heterotrophic microorganisms, autotrophs naturally obtain energy and materials from the surrounding environment unscrupulously, transcribe and copy their own kind, and the number will increase exponentially.

This increase will continue until the loser of the second microbial war arrives.

They will suppress the number of autotrophic microorganisms and increase their own number. As a last resort, autotrophs will go to farther areas without microorganisms to reproduce.

Then, in this new area, what has happened will be repeated, and batches of losers will flee to places where autotrophic microorganisms multiply in large numbers and there are no victors in the war.

That's the cycle, and it's this 'follow me' cycle that microbes soon took over everywhere in the planet's oceans.

Then what? When every place on this planet is covered by microorganisms, will there be no way for autotrophic microorganisms to survive?

No, in the subsequent microbial wars, those victors can be said to have not been exposed to autotrophic microorganisms.

It is for this reason that as microorganisms occupy the entire ocean, a rather dramatic situation arises. The winners will specifically attack the heterotrophs of the losers. For the autotrophs that are far weaker than the losers Type is invisible.

In this way, the balance of the microbiome is established.

So, does the development of microorganisms stop at this point?

Obviously not.

Life is very wonderful, every self-replication can be regarded as a vote of life on the road of evolution.

When such votes accumulate to a certain extent, evolution occurs.

This provides the possibility for the emergence of various microbial capabilities such as cell walls, nuclei, and organelles in the future.

Although the purpose is to survive, the planned routes are different based on different ideas.

Some microorganisms will evolve attack capabilities, perhaps acid that can easily break through cell membranes, or protein spikes, or simply magnify their own body, directly wrapping the opponent into themselves and decomposing.

Some microorganisms evolve their ability to reproduce in order to win in numbers—if they can't beat you, I can't give birth to you?

This type of microorganism will basically greatly reduce the length of its gene chain. The shorter the length, the shorter the time for gene replication, and the growth of the number will naturally be faster.

However, in Huogu's view, this method is just a matter of benevolence and wisdom.

The microorganism with the shortest gene chain on earth is a virus, so what type of microorganism is a virus? Heterotrophic.

This just shows that it doesn't make any sense for the self-supporting type to have an advantage in numbers.

There are also some microorganisms that will try their best to expand a new living space and evolve their abilities in this direction.

Taking this as an opportunity, since the Ice Age, the first batch of original indigenous creatures to land on the surface also appeared.

They live on the shore near the water, decompose those hard rocks and gravel, and process them, and fertile soil is born.

Among them, what Huogu cares most about is some kind of autotrophic microorganism that dominates a piece of water on this planet where heterotrophic microorganisms are rampant.

Huogu had seen this kind of creature before on Earth—cyanobacteria.

The microorganisms that used to be the lowest on the earth now belong to the most powerful autotrophic microorganisms on the planet.