墨尔本PTE素材库—Low Biodiversity Brings Earlier Bloom

Low Biodiversity Brings Earlier Bloom

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这篇文章内容较短，难易程度差不多在3 out of 10左右哦~所以无论是PTE目标几分的学生，都不应该有太大的问题哦~ 先听一遍，听懂大部分的内容，然后做一个summarize的练习；之后再看这篇阅读，把自己不认识的单词的都挑出来，做详细的查询以及备注工作。当然啦，大部分的生词小编都已经帮大家整理啦！ 如果想要了解单词的其他的信息，比如音标，比如固定搭配，比如用法，也可以自行再做细致的查询哦~

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[Key Vocabulary]

Dial up: 拨号， (通过电话) 取得联系，达到，了解

Bloom: n. 花，旺盛，青春；Vt. 使开花，使茂盛

Biodiversity: n. 生物多样性

Magnitude: n. 大小，量级

Grassland: n. 草原，牧草地

Plot: n. 情节，图，阴谋，计划

Moisture: n. 水分，湿度，潮湿，降雨量

Nitrogen: [化学] 氮

Tweak: n. 扭，拧；Vt. 扭，用力拉，拧

Pollinator: n. 传粉媒介，传粉者

Cascade: n. 小瀑布，瀑布状物，串联

Synergistic: adj. 协同的，协作的，协同作用的

Unpredictable: adj. 不可预知的，出乎意料的

Full Transcript

For every two species lost in a grassland, the remaining flowers there bloomed a day earlier—on par with changes due to rising global temperatures. Christopher Intagliata reports.

As climate change dials up global temperatures, one effect is an earlier flower bloom. But it turns out there’s another factor that also means faster flowering: a loss in biodiversity in a flower field.

“The amount of change in flowering time that we see with diversity loss is in the same magnitude range as the amount of change in flowering time we see with rising temperatures, globally.” Amy Wolf, an ecologist at Columbia University and U.C. Davis.

Wolf and her colleagues studied that effect in a grassland in northern California, in study plots with two to 16 species of plants. And they found that, for every two species lost, the remaining flowers blossomed a day earlier, on average. Possibly because the less diverse plots had higher soil temperatures, more moisture, and more nitrogen—all variables that could tweak bloom time. The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Amelia A. Wolf et al., Flowering phenology shifts in response to biodiversity loss]

The reason it matters? Because flowers might bloom earlier than pollinators are expecting them. “And that could lead to a whole cascade of things. If plants don’t get pollinated, or they don’t get pollinated well, then you can start to lose species at an even more rapid rate.”

Wolf says it’s too soon to know whether biodiversity loss and climate change will have synergistic effects on flower timing. But combine climate change, species loss, and unpredictable ecological effects like this—and you’ve got a pretty ugly arrangement.

—Christopher Intagliata

(Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/low-biodiversity-brings-earlier-bloom/)