科学美国人60秒 SSS Housing Boom Busts Birds' Valentine's Day
时间：2018-12-24 作者：英语课 分类：2017年Scientific American(二)月
Urban development is encroaching on forests in the Pacific Northwest. And it’s also ruining Valentine’s Day for some songbirds. Because urban growth is making it a challenge for some birds like the Pacific Wren 1 to stay faithful to their partners, at least in Seattle—a housing boom is taking over the wren’s habitat: the thick forest understory
“So, I really think it’s just the fact that we really kind of pull the rug out from underneath 2 these birds. Take their forest away.”
John Marzluff, professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington. While birds like crows and sparrow adapt well to human habitats, Marzluff says that development is forcing the wren and other songbird species to find new digs. And when that wren moves, it also abandons its mate. The work is in the journal PLoS ONE. [John M. Marzluff et al., Breeding Dispersal by Birds in a Dynamic Urban Ecosystem]
Marzluff’s decade-long study looks at six species in landscapes undergoing various levels of development.
“If you don’t go out for many years and follow individually marked birds, you’ll never really understand how nesting success over an animal’s lifetime or their strategies of moving and divorcing or finding new partners and places plays out over their lifetime.”
The study shows that even after birds reestablish themselves elsewhere, they have a harder time laying eggs and rearing chicks than they used to. More careful planning to let small urban forests remain could help even the smallest bird species thrive in cities.
“These are not huge areas in the suburban 3 matrix…they’re areas of 30 to 150 acres, and they are relatively 4 easy to set aside for birds like this.” Otherwise, all those newly built houses means birds have broken homes.
—Emily Schwing
- A wren is a kind of short-winged songbird.鹪鹩是一种短翼的鸣禽。
- My bird guide confirmed that a Carolina wren had discovered the thickets near my house.我掌握的鸟类知识使我确信，一只卡罗莱纳州鹪鹩已经发现了我家的这个灌木丛。
- Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
- She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。
- Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
- There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。
- The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
- The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。