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  3. Species interdependence in nature confers many benefits on the species involved , but it can also become a point of weakness whe

Species interdependence in nature confers many benefits on the species involved , but it can also become a point of weakness whe

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问题     Species interdependence in nature confers many benefits on the species involved , but it can also become a point of weakness when one species involved in the relationship is affected by a catastrophe. Thus, flowering plant species dependent on insect pollination, as opposed to self-pollination or wind pollination, could be endangered when the population of insect-pollinators is depleted by the use of pesticides.
    In the forests of New Brunswick, for example, various pesticides have been sprayed in the past 25 years in ef- forts to control the spruce budworm, an economically significant pest. Scientists have now investigated the effects of the spraying of Matacil, one of the anti-budworm agents that is least toxic to in- sect-pollinators. They studied Matacil’s effects on insect mortality in a wide variety of wild insect species and on plant fecundity, expressed as the percentage of the total flowers on an individual plant that actually developed fruit and bore seeds. They found that the most pronounced mortality after the spraying of Matacil occurred among the smaller bees and one family of flies, insects that were all important pollinators of numerous species of plants growing beneath the tree canopy of forests. The fecundity of plants in one common indigenous species, the red-osier dogwood, was significantly reduced in the sprayed areas as compared to that of plants in control plots where Matacil was not sprayed. This species is highly dependent on the insect-pollinators most vul- nerable to Matacil. The creeping dogwood, a species similar to the red-osier dogwood, but which is pollinated by large bees, such as bumblebees, showed no significant decline in fecundity. Since large bees are not affected by the spraying of Matacil, these results and weight to the argument that spraying where the pollinators are sensitive to the pesticide used decreases plant fecundity.
    The question of whether the decrease in plant fecundity caused by the spraying of pesticides actually causes a decline in the overall population of flowering plant species still remains unan- swered. Plant species dependent solely on seeds for survival or dispersal are obviously more vulnerable to any decrease in plant fecundity that occurs, whatever its cause. If, on the other hand, vegeta- tive growth and dispersal(by means of shoots or runners)are available as alternative reproductive strategies for a species, then decreases in plant fecundity may be of little consequence. The fe- cundity effects described here are likely to have the most profound impact on plant species with all four of the following characteristics: a short life span, a narrow geographic range, an incapacity for vegetative propagation, and a dependence on a small number of insect-pollinator species. Perhaps we should give special attention to the conservation of such plant species since they lack key factors in their defenses against the environmental disruption caused by pesticide use.
The passage suggests that the lack of an observed decline in the fecundity of the creeping dogwood strengthens the researchers conclusions regarding pesticide use because the
选项 A、creeping dogwood its a species that does not resemble other forest plants.
B、creeping dogwood is a species pollinated by a broader range of insect species than are most dogwood species.
C、creeping dogwood grows primarily in regions that were not sprayed with pesticide, and so served as a control for the experiment.
D、creeping dogwood is similar to the red-osier dogwood, but its insect pollinators are known to be insensitive to the pesticide used in the study.
E、geographical range of the creeping dogwood is similar to that of the red-osier dogwood, but the latter species relies less on seeds for reproduction.
答案D
解析 文中指出：creeping dogwood没有有性生殖力的显著下降，加强了作者关于杀虫剂的结论，因为：A．此植物和其他种类不同。无。B．此植物比绝大多数有亲缘的植物虫媒昆虫范围广。未提。C．此植物主要生长在未喷洒杀虫剂地区。无。D．此植物和red—osier dogwood相近，但其传粉昆虫对研究中的杀虫剂不敏感。正确，见原文L34—44。E．“relies less on seeds”文中无。
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