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  3. It’s not only humans that flourish in large settlements. Some ants find urban life so accommodating that their populations explo

It’s not only humans that flourish in large settlements. Some ants find urban life so accommodating that their populations explo

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问题     It’s not only humans that flourish in large settlements. Some ants find urban life so accommodating that their populations explode and they form supercolonies in cities.
    "One of the most common house ant species might have been built for living in some of the smallest spaces in a forest, but the ants have found ways to take advantage of the comforts of city living," Purdue University said in a statement. Grzegorz Buczkowski, a Purdue University research assistant professor of entomology, discovered odorous house ants live in supercolonies, creating complex networks entomologists have never seen with the species before now. He found that odorous house ant colonies become larger and more complex as they move from forest to city and act somewhat like an invasive species, the university said. "The ants live about 50 to a colony with one queen in forest settings but explode into supercolonies with more than 6 million workers and 50 000 queens in urban areas," the university explained.
    "This is a native species that’s doing this," said Buczkowski, whose results are published in the early online version of the journal Biological Invasions. "Native ants are not supposed to become invasive. We don’t know of any other native ants that are outcompeting other species of native ants like these," Buczkowski said. Odorous house ants live in hollow acorn shells in the forest. They’re called odorous because they have a coconut (椰子)-or rum-like smell when crushed. They’re considered one of the most common house ants, Purdue said. In semi-natural areas that are a cross of forest and urban areas, such as a park, Buczkowski said he observed colonies of about 500 workers with a single queen. "It’s possible that as the ants get closer to urban areas they have easier access to food, shelter and other resources," he said.
    "In the forest, they have to compete for food and nesting sites," Buczkowski said. "In the cities, they don’t have that competition. People give them a place to nest, food to eat. " Buczkowski observed the ants in three different settings on and around the Purdue campus. He said it might be expected that if the odorous house ants were able to multiply into complex colonies, other ants would do the same. But Buczkowski found no evidence that other ants had adapted to new environments and evolved into larger groups as the odorous house ants have, Purdie said. "It’s possible that odorous house ants are better adapted to city environments than other ant species or that they had somehow outcompeted or dominated other species," he said. "This raises a lot of questions we’d like to answer. " Buczkowski said understanding why the supercolonies form could lead to better control of the pests in homes, as well as ensuring that they don’t outcompete beneficial species.
    Future studies on odorous house ants will include studying the ant’s genetics and trying to understand the effects of urbanization of odorous house ants, Purdue said.
The odorous house ants move to urban areas because they ______.
选项 A、want to outcompete and dominate other species in cities
B、could have easier access to resources they need
C、have the ability to have a new place to nest
D、like to compete for food and nesting sites
答案B
解析 文章第四段讲述蚂蚁迁徙到城市的原因，概括起来就是城市里不愁吃也不愁住。第三段末句也提到“蚂蚁接近城市可能更容易获得食物、住所和其他的资源”，[B]是对此句的总结概括，故为正确答案。文中第四段提到，“有气味的搬家蚂蚁很可能比其他物种能更好地适应城市环境，或者它们以某种方法打败或统治其他物种。”这只是一种可能，而且并没有具体限制在城市之中，故排除[A]。[C]是它们搬到城区应有的能力，不是主要原因；[D]与原文意思相悖，故也排除[C]和[D]。  
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