字神帝國英語天地

今日主題：Bees Rank Pollen by Taste / 蜜蜂依據味道對花粉進行排名

洪欣老師推薦：托福聽力最好的課外教材：60-Second Science
康康精選托福會考的主題，堅持每天精聽一定會進步的哦!!

建議方法：
1. 先聽兩三遍 (不看文稿)
2. 再一句一句聽寫 (每句都要聽寫數遍，直到寫出85%以上的字)
3. 最後check文稿，看哪聽不出來，單字沒背過，還是發音不熟。
4. 堅持天天聽，就能每天進步哦。

MP3音檔 (按右鍵可下載聽)：喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~
http://online1.tingclass.net/voaspe/…/20160719sa_science.mp3

只有音檔怎夠，聽不懂地方，不用怕，康康幫你準備好中英文稿了：

中英文稿：
Walk through Times Square—you're bombarded with advertising. And it turns out, a bumblebee might have a similar feeling, buzzing through a field of flowers. "So these flowers are these billboards, they're advertising a good, this delicious nectar reward, and bees are very picky shoppers." Anne Leonard, a pollination biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno.
走過紐約時報廣場——廣告不斷地煩擾著你的生活。並且事實證明，熊蜂在嗡嗡地飛過花的海洋時，可能會有類似的感覺。“因此，這些花朵就像那些廣告牌一樣，它們在為這些美味的花蜜打廣告，蜜蜂就是那些非常挑剔的消費者。雷諾內華達大學授粉生物學家，安妮•倫納德說道。

She describes a flower field as a sort of pollination marketplace. And one way bees choose where to visit? "Bees are nectar experts. They are really good at assessing even really small differences in the sugar concentration of nectar." They also scope out flower shape and size, color and scent. And now Leonard and her colleagues have discovered that bumblebees are pollen aficionados, too.
她把花的海洋描述為一個授粉市場，蜜蜂選擇去哪裡採集花蜜的方法是什麼？“蜜蜂是花蜜的專家。它們很擅長對花蜜進行評估，即使是花蜜糖的濃度存在微小的區別。”它們還能確定花的形狀、大小、顏色和氣味。現在倫納德和她的研究團隊發現熊蜂也是花粉愛好者。

They found that out by lacing batches of cherry pollen with either table sugar or bitter quinine. And to display the pollen to bees, "We got really into it—we started 3-D printing flowers in our lab." And for the anther— the male flower part, which presents the pollen—pipe cleaners. "So we bought out Michael's craft store supplies of these pipe cleaners and used them in our experiments."
他們通過給不同批次分別含有甜蔗糖、苦奎寧的櫻桃花粉系上標籤，並向蜜蜂展示來進行研究。“我們真的深入到這項研究中——我們開始在實驗室3-D打印這些花朵。對於呈現出花粉的花藥——花的雄性部分，我們使用清管器。因此我們買下了邁克爾工藝品店的清管器並在我們的實驗中使用它們。

Turns out bees would return again and again to the same color flower that dispensed sweet pollen, and spend more time collecting there. But when confronted with the bitter pollen? They sought a different colored flower for their very next stop. All of which suggests that , in addition to savoring nectar, bees taste pollen too—and judge flowers by it. The results are in the journal Biology Letters. [Felicity Muth, Jacob S. Francis and Anne S. Leonard, Bees use the taste of pollen to determine which flowers to visit]
實驗證明，蜜蜂會在相同顏色含有甜蔗糖花粉的花朵間重複往返，並且花費更多的時間來採集。但當遇到含有苦奎寧的花粉時呢？它們在下一次停留時將會尋找一種與之不同顏色的花朵。所有這一切表明，除了品味花蜜，蜜蜂也會品嚐花粉的味道——並且通過花粉來判斷花朵。該研究結果刊登在《生物學快報》（Biology Letters）雜誌上。

The finding means that plants have to find a happy medium: "So can you make your pollen attractive enough that the bees will collect it, but distasteful enough that they won't collect too much of it?" And that balancing act, of carefully calibrated chemistry—it's just one of the many transactions that plays out in the buzzing pollination marketplace. Where the object is to make a sweet profit.
該發現意味著植物必須找到一個折中的辦法：“所以你只有讓你的花粉有足夠的吸引力，蜜蜂才會進行採集，但不合口味的花粉，它們不會採集太多?”並且這一精確校準化學的自然運作——只是在嗡嗡地授粉市場中所表現出的眾多交易中的一種。在該市場中，蜜蜂們旨在獲得甜蜜的“利潤”。