問題詳情

Questions 10-19What unusual or unique biological train led to the remarkable diversification andunchallenged success of the ants for ever 50 million years? The answer appears to bethat they were the first group of predatory ensocial insects that both lived and foragedLine primarily in the soil and in rotting vegetation on the ground. Eusocial refers tc a form(5) of insect society characterized by specialization of tasks and cooperative care of theyoung; it is rare among insects. Richly organized colonies of the land made possibleby eusociality enjoy several key advantages over solitary individuals.Under most circumstances groups of workers arc better able to forage for food anddefend the nest, because they can switch from individual to group response and back(10) again swiftly and according to need. When a food object or nest intruder is too large forone individual to handle, nestmates can be quickly assembled by alarm or recruitmentsignals. Equally important is the fact that the execution of multiple-step tasks isaccomplished in a series-parallel sequence. That is, individual ants can specialize inparticular steps, moving from one object (such as a larva to be fed) to another (a second(15) larva to be fed). They do not need to carry each task to completion from start to finish—.for example, to check the larva first, then collect the food, then feed the larva. Hence, ifeach link in the chain has many workers in attendance, a senes directed at any particularobject is less likely to fail. Moreover, ants specializing in particular labor categoriestypically constitute a caste specialized by age or body form or both. There has bees some(20) documentation of the superiority in performance and net energetic yield of various castesfor their modal tasks, although careful experimental studies are still relatively few.What makes ants unusual in the company of eusocial insects is the fact that they arethe only eusocial predators (predators are animals that capture and feed on other animals)occupying the soil and ground litter. The eusocial termites live in the same places as antsand also have wingless workers, but they feed almost exclusively on dead vegetation.
10. Which of the following questions does thepassage primarily answer?
(A) How do individual ants adapt tospecialized tasks?
(B) What are the differences between socialand solitary insects?
(C) Why are ants predators?
(D) Why have ants been able to thrive forsuch a long time?

參考答案

答案：D
難度：簡單0.857143
統計：A(0),B(1),C(0),D(6),E(0)

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