[Swamp City] has begun to take shape, and the Legion of the God's Envoy King has taken root in this strange land. But the protagonist and the other ants are still very unfamiliar with this land and its ecology, which is completely different from the previous territory.
The ecology of the swamp area is very different from the plain area occupied by the original Big-headed Ant Kingdom and the current Divine Envoy King's Army. Not to mention the complex and difficult-to-identify plants, even the insects living in it are completely different from the hills and plain areas not far away.
The sky here is dominated by dragonflies and damselflies, and even the flying knights have to stay away. But there are more mosquitoes here, and there are often mosquito pillars that block out the sky, especially in the evening and night.
Fortunately, these mosquitoes pose no threat to ants, as they feed on nectar and plant juices.
These mosquitoes and flies are the main prey of dragonflies and damselflies.
The protagonist knows that female mosquitoes need to suck the blood of large animals before laying eggs to obtain sufficient nutrition. In this world without mammals, reptiles and birds, he does not know what female mosquitoes rely on to obtain sufficient nutrition. However, the protagonist is not a biologist, and he has no urgent desire to solve this mystery.
On the small land islands in the swamp, there are many spiders, nematodes, ticks and mites, as well as oligochaetes, springtails and dipteran insects.
There are some insects that are rare in the territory of the Angel King Legion.
For example, ticks and mites are a group of small arthropods with various shapes, sizes, living habits and habitats. Some are herbivorous, some are predatory, and some are parasites of other invertebrates and vertebrates. . Ticks and mites are distributed all over the world, even in deserts and arctic, mountain tops and sea bottoms, rivers and hot springs. They are more common in soil, plants and animals.
A large blood-sucking tick is common in swamp areas. Insects including ants are its targets. It is greedy and can kill double digits of ants or even a dragonfly in one blood meal, and its body size will expand dozens of times. Even more than a hundred times.
Another example is some dipteran insects, such as the dragonflies and damselflies mentioned above, and some wingless dipteran insects, such as some midges, which like blood-sucking ticks like to bite other larger insects.
There are also some ferocious tiger beetles whose two pairs of wings have been degraded. They really deserve the name Diptera, but this insect that can only crawl is very ferocious. This medium-sized beetle usually has bright colors and colorful spots. Its head is large, front-mouthed, with a well-developed and powerful upper jaw that crosses the left and right sides. Carnivorous tiger beetles dominate the swamp ground just as dragonflies dominate the sky. They are active during the day and prey on various bugs. The tiger beetle is also the relatively fastest animal in the world. It only takes one second to jump to a location 171 times longer than its own body, which is equivalent to a cheetah running 18,810 kilometers away to hunt for prey at a speed of 110 kilometers per hour. In the human world, the bold tiger beetle even has the nickname "roadblock". When people walk on the road, the tiger beetle is always three to five meters in front of the pedestrian, with its head facing the pedestrian. When the pedestrian approaches it, it will Then he flew low and retreated, still facing the pedestrians, always blocking them in front.
There are also some insects that are not unique to swamps, such as nematodes. Nematoda is one of the largest phyla in the animal kingdom and is a pseudocoelomate. Most of them are small and cylindrical, also known as roundworms. They can be found everywhere in fresh water, sea water, and land. The number of individuals and species often exceeds that of other animals, and they can be found in extreme environments such as Antarctica and ocean trenches. Many nematodes are parasitic on animals and plants, and some live freely in soil, freshwater and seawater environments. Parasitic nematodes are pathogens of animals including ants and humans, such as roundworms, whipworms, pinworms, hookworms, Ants do not like Trichinella spiralis and Strongyloides stercoralis, and rarely prey on them.
Another example is oligochaete insects, the most typical of which are earthworms. Earthworms are also common in plain areas, but they only emerge from the ground after rain and when the climate is humid. Earthworm meat is a kind of meat that ants like. Although this huge prey is not easy to prey on due to its huge size, strong strength and sticky body fluids, ants will still attack in large numbers after discovering this prey. . Some earthworms are too clumsy to return to the ground in time after the sun rises and are dried into earthworms, which is in vain for the ants who discovered them.
Another example is springtails, which are primitive insects that are small, wingless and have internal mouthparts. Most species have a bifurcated appendage at the end of the abdomen, which is held by a gripper when stationary and can eject the insect body when released, hence the name springtails or springtails, but they usually mainly crawl. Springtails have straw-like sticky tubes on their abdomens that secrete sticky substances and take in water. No metamorphosis, it matures after molting 3-12 times, and molts approximately 50 times in its lifetime. Springtails are widely distributed in various soils and leaf litter around the world. Some species are called snow fleas. They can survive in near-freezing temperatures and appear in groups on the snow. Most species feed on spoiled food, sometimes damaging vegetable garden crops and mushroom. The most familiar thing to the Angel King Legion is the green round springtail among the springtails. These pests like to harm the farmland of the Angel King Legion, especially beans and grass crops.
There are also many characteristic insects in and around the vastest waters in swamp areas, such as dragon lice, water spiders, mosquito larvae, and dragonfly larvae. There are also many water flies and water flies.
Waterfly larvae grow like worms, and are either carnivorous or herbivorous. They live in swamp water or putrid quagmire. After the larvae pupate in the skin of the larvae, they turn into adults that look like bees or wasps and have distinctive characteristics. It has yellow, green or black stripes and likes to appear near flowers.
Water flies are insects in the family Ephydridae of the order Diptera. They are small in size and appear in large numbers in swamp waters. They are not afraid of the dirty and rancid mire that some insects are afraid of. Water flies can be said to be one of the insects that are least particular about their living environment. There is a kind of crude water fly (Psilopa p.
etrolei) even produce and breed in crude oil pools, eating insects that accidentally fall into the pools. However, the larvae of this sloppy water fly are very delicious and nutritious, probably just like the meat of a pig that likes to roll in the mud is delicious.
Generally speaking, the swamp ecology is unique, but it also hides many dangers, whether it is blood-sucking ticks and midges that bite and suck blood, fierce dragonflies and tiger beetles that actively forage and hunt, quietly ambush spiders and flies, and dragons hiding in the water. Lice and waterhoppers are all threats from ants.
No wonder there are very few ants living here except parasitic ants, and the ferocious tribe of scythe-hunting ants also refuse to enter this dangerous land.
