剑雅17阅读真题Test4 Passage1原文

剑桥17一共收集了雅思真题4套，下文羊驼小编整理了剑雅17第四套阅读真题原文Test 4 Reading Passage 1，以下是阅读部分第一篇文章Passage 1的文章原文及参考译文，供各位烤鸭们复习参考。想要了解更多关于剑雅17听力和阅读真题答案及解析的考生可查看剑雅17听力阅读真题答案及解析汇总，为助力各位烤鸭们备考雅思，羊驼教育雅思APP推出剑桥雅思真题及答案解析视频，可在羊驼雅思APP课程一栏获取剑桥雅思系列的视频信息。

READING PASSAGE  1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Bats to the rescue

How Madagascar’s bats are helping to save the rainforest

There are few places in the world where relations between agriculture and conservation are more strained. Madagascar’s forests are being converted to agricultural land at a rate of one percent every year. Much of this destruction is fuelled by the cultivation of the country’s main staple crop: rice. And a key reason for this destruction is that insect pests are destroying vast quantities of what is grown by local subsistence farmers, leading them to clear forest to create new paddy   fields. The result is devastating habitat and biodiversity loss on the island, but not all species are suffering. In fact, some of the island’s insectivorous bats are currently thriving and this has important implications for farmers and conservationists alike.

Enter University of Cambridge zoologist Ricardo Rocha. He’s passionate about conservation, and bats. More specifically, he’s interested in how bats are responding to human activity and deforestation in particular. Rocha’s new study shows that several species of bats are giving Madagascar’s rice farmers a vital pest control service by feasting on plagues of insects. And this, he believes, can ease the financial pressure on farmers to turn forest into fields.

Bats comprise roughly one-fifth of all mammal species in Madagascar and thirty-six recorded bat species are native to the island, making it one of the most important regions for conservation of    this animal group anywhere in the world.

Co-leading an international team of scientists, Rocha found that several species of indigenous bats are taking advantage of habitat modification to hunt insects swarming above the country’s    rice fields. They include the Malagasy mouse-eared bat, Major’s long-fingered bat, the Malagasy white-bellied free-tailed bat and Peters’ wrinkle-lipped bat.

‘These winner species are providing a valuable free service to Madagascar as biological pest suppressors,’ says Rocha. ‘We found that six species of bat are preying on rice pests, including the paddy swarming caterpillar and grass webworm. The damage which these insects cause puts the    island’s farmers under huge financial pressure and that encourages deforestation.’

The study, now published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, set out to investigate the feeding activity of insectivorous bats in the farmland bordering the Ranomafana National Park in the southeast of the country.

Rocha and his team used state-of-the-art ultrasonic recorders to record over a thousand bat

‘feeding buzzes’ (echolocation sequences used by bats to target their prey) at 54 sites, in order   to identify the favourite feeding spots of the bats. They next used DNA barcoding techniques to analyse droppings collected from bats at the different sites.

The recordings revealed that bat activity over rice fields was much higher than it was in continuous forest – seven times higher over rice fields which were on flat ground, and sixteen times higher over fields on the sides of hills – leaving no doubt that the animals are preferentially foraging in these man-made ecosystems. The researchers suggest that the bats favour these fields because lack of water and nutrient run-off make these crops more susceptible to insect pest infestations. DNA analysis showed that all six species of bat had fed on economically important insect pests. While the findings indicated that rice farming benefits most from the bats, the scientists also found indications that the bats were consuming pests of other crops, including the    black twig borer (which infests coffee plants), the sugarcane cicada, the macadamia nut-borer, and the sober tabby (a pest of citrus fruits).

‘The effectiveness of bats as pest controllers has already been proven in the USA and Catalonia,’  said co-author James Kemp, from the University of Lisbon. ‘But our study is the first to show this happening in Madagascar, where the stakes for both farmers and conservationists are so high.’

Local people may have a further reason to be grateful to their bats. While the animal is often     associated with spreading disease, Rocha and his team found evidence that Malagasy bats feed not just on crop pests but also on mosquitoes – carriers of malaria, Rift Valley fever virus and   elephantiasis – as well as blackflies, which spread river blindness.

Rocha points out that the relationship is complicated. When food is scarce, bats become a crucial source of protein for local people. Even the children will hunt them. And as well as roosting in trees, the bats sometimes roost in buildings, but are not welcomed there because they make them unclean. At the same time, however, they are associated with sacred caves and the ancestors, so they can be viewed as beings between worlds, which makes them very significant in the culture of the people. And one potential problem is that while these bats are benefiting from farming, at the   same time deforestation is reducing the places where they can roost, which could have long-term   effects on their numbers. Rocha says, ‘With the right help, we hope that farmers can promote this  mutually beneficial relationship by installing bat houses.’

Rocha and his colleagues believe that maximising bat populations can help to boost crop yields   and promote sustainable livelihoods. The team is now calling for further research to quantify this contribution. ‘I’m very optimistic,’ says Rocha. ‘If we give nature a hand, we can speed up the process of regeneration.’

剑雅17参考译文

拯救蝙蝠

马达加斯加的蝙蝠是如何帮助拯救雨林的。

世界上几乎没有其它地方农业和环境保护之间的关系如此紧张。马达加斯加的森 林正以每年百分之一的速度转变为农业用地。这种破坏很大程度上是由该国主要 粮食作物      水稻的种植造成的。造成这种破坏的一个关键原因是，虫害正在破 坏当地自给农民所种植的大量作物，导致他们开垦森林以开辟新的稻田。其结果 是岛上的栖息地和生物多样性遭到破坏，但并非所有的物种都受到影响。事实上， 该岛的一些食虫蝙蝠目前正在茁壮成长，这对农民和环保主义者都有重要意义。

剑桥大学动物学家 Ricardo Rocha来了，他对保护环境和蝙蝠非常感兴趣。更具 体地说，他尤其对蝙蝠如何应对人类活动及森林砍伐感兴趣。Rocha 的新研究表 明，几种蝙蝠通过捕食昆虫，为马达加斯加的稻农提供了重要的害虫防治服务。 他认为，这可以缓解农民把森林变成田地的经济压力。

蝙蝠约占马达加斯加所有哺乳动物物种的五分之一，记录在案的蝙蝠物种中就有 36种原产于该岛，使其成为世界上保护这一动物群体最重要的地区之一。

作为国际科学家团队的共同领导者，Rocha 发现几种本土蝙蝠正在利用栖息地的 改变来捕食该国稻田上空成群结队的昆虫。它们包括马达加斯加鼠耳蝙蝠、梅杰 的长指蝙蝠、马达加斯加白腹无尾蝠和彼得斯皱唇蝙蝠。

“这些物种作为生物害虫抑制剂为马达加斯加提供了宝贵的免费服务，”Rocha 说。 “我们发现有六种蝙蝠正在捕食水稻害虫，包括稻田成群的毛虫和草地螟。这些  昆虫造成的破坏使该岛的农民面临巨大的经济压力，从而导致他们去砍伐森林。”

该研究现已发表在《农业、生态系统和环境》杂志上，旨在调查该国东南部拉诺 马法纳国家公园周边农田中食虫蝙蝠的摄食活动。

Rocha 和他的团队使用最先进的超声波记录器，在54个地点记录了超过1000个

蝙蝠的"觅食嗡嗡声"(蝙蝠用来瞄准猎物的回声定位序列),以确定蝙蝠最喜 欢的进食点。接下来，他们使用DNA  条形码技术来分析从不同地点的蝙蝠身上 收集的粪便。

录音显示，蝙蝠在稻田上的活动比在连续的森林要高得多—比平地稻田高7倍， 比山坡上的田地高16倍--毫无疑问，这些动物优先在这些人造的生态系统中觅 食。研究人员认为，蝙蝠偏爱这些田地是因为缺水和营养物质的流失使这些作物 更容易受到虫害的侵袭。 DNA 分析表明，所有六种蝙蝠都以重要的经济害虫为 食。虽然研究结果表明，水稻种植从蝙蝠那里受益最多，但科学家们也发现有迹  象表明，蝙蝠正在捕食其他作物的害虫，包括黑枝虫(侵扰咖啡植物)、甘蔗蝉、 澳洲坚果蛀虫和虎斑(一种柑橘类水果的害虫)。

‘蝙蝠作为害虫控制者的有效性已经在美国和加泰罗尼亚得到证实，’来自里斯本 大学的合著者James   Kemp说。‘但我们的研究是首次表情这种情况在马达加斯 加发生，那里的农民和环保人士都面临着巨大的风险。’

当地人可能还有一个更深层的原因来感谢他们的蝙蝠。虽然这种动物经常与传播 疾病联系在一起，但Rocha 和他的团队发现，马达加斯加蝙蝠不仅以作物害虫为 食，而且还以蚊子--疟疾、裂谷热病毒和象皮病的载体--以及传播河盲症的黑蝇 为食。

Rocha 指出，这种关系很复杂。当食物匮乏时，蝙蝠成为当地人的重要蛋白质来 源。即使是孩子们也会猎杀它们。除了在树上栖息外，蝙蝠有时也在建筑物中栖  息，但不受欢迎，因为它们让建筑物不干净。但与此同时，它们又与神圣的洞穴  和祖先联系在一起，所以它们可以被视为世界之间的生命，这使得它们在人们的 文化中非常重要。而一个潜在的问题是，当这些蝙蝠从农业中受益的同时，森林  砍伐正在减少它们可以栖息的地方，这可能对它们的数量产生长期影响。 Rocha  说，‘在正确的帮助下，我们希望农民能够通过安装蝙蝠屋来促进这种互利关系。

Rocha 和他的同事们认为，最大限度地增加蝙蝠的数量可以帮助提高作物产量， 促进可持续的生计。该团队现在呼吁进一步研究以量化这一贡献。“我非常乐 观，”Rocha 说。“如果我们向大自然伸出援手，我们可以加快再生的进程。”