Bumblebees(大黄蜂) are clever: when pollen(花粉) is short and plants near the nest are not yet flowering,

Bumblebees(大黄蜂) are clever: when pollen(花粉) is short and plants near the nest are not yet flowering, they have learned to force them to bloom. Research published on Thursday in Science shows that the insects puncture the plants’ leaves, which causes them to flower about 30 days earlier than they otherwise would. How the technique developed and why the plants react by blooming remain unclear.
Consuelo De Moraes, a chemical ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, says she and her teammates were observing one kind of bumblebee in an unrelated experiment when they noticed the insects were damaging plant leaves and wondered why. “At first we thought they might be feeding on the plants,” she says. And because previous research had shown stress could cause plants to flower, they also wondered whether the bees might be creating blooms on purpose.
To find out, the team placed bumblebees together with tomato plants in cages. The bees soon cut several holes in the leaves of each plant. As a test, the researchers tried to copy the bumblebee damage in additional plants with a knife. Both sets of plants with injured leaves bloomed faster, but the ones punctured by the bees flowered weeks earlier, suggesting that chemicals in the insects’ saliva(唾液) may be involved as well.
Next, the researchers moved out of the laboratory to see whether bumblebees would continue to damage nonflowering plants near their nest even if blooming plants were available farther away. They did so. The findings suggest the bees’ behavior is an adaptation that improves food-hunting efficiency(效率).
In the future, scientists could test how the behavior may have developed and how widespread it is among other wild bumblebees, as well as what is happening in plants after a bee bite. Understanding those questions could help us better face the climate change.
8. What does the underlined word “puncture” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?
A. bite B. touch
C. kiss D. eat
9. What inspired Consuelo and her team to do the present research?
A. The stress causing plants to flower. B. The difference in plants’ flowering time.
C. The bumblebees’ feeding on the plants. D. The bumblebees’ damaging plants’ leaves.
10. Why did the researchers copy what the bumblebees did?
A. To prove a knife cut can work as a bee bite.
B. To figure out what helps plants flower faster
C. To find out why bumblebees damage plants.
D. To show bumblebees’ saliva helps plants bloom.
11. What have the researchers made clear?
A. What happens in plants after a bee bite.
B. How bumblebees have learned the technique.
C. Whether bumblebees are clever in finding food.
D. Whether all the bumblebees have learned the skill.
【答案】