特殊教育
114年
英文
第 23 題
📖 題組：
On the island of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean, a party was interrupted by an uninvited guest: a brown form curled around the remaining roast pig, swallowing the pig’s flesh whole. The visitor was a brown tree snake, an alien invader which is thought to have been accidentally introduced to Guam in the 1940s, perhaps after sneaking onto a cargo ship. Before this, an abundance of native birds had enjoyed their life in the island’s otherworldly forests. But within just four decades of the snake’s invasion, these predators had begun emptying the jungle of every single one. Out of 12 species, ten are now extinct on the island. Without birds to disperse seeds, trees are dying out, and the ecosystem is changing. What’s scarier is that an evolutionary experiment is unfolding. On most of the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, there are relatively few spiders in the rainy season, with a large increase in number as the climate dries out. But not on Guam. There is a near-continuous tangle of silvery threads of webs that stretches for miles, going from ground level all the way up to the treetops, all year round. To find out how many spiders had taken over Guam, some scientists set about doing surveys in the island’s forests. The scientists found that during the wet season, there were 40 times more spiders in Guam’s forests than on the nearby islands of Rota, Tinian, and Saipan. Since Rota, Tinian, and Saipan are free of brown tree snakes and still have healthy bird populations, the study suggests that Guam’s spider population may once have been unremarkable, before the absence of birds. And it fits with research conducted in the Bahamas, which has found that spiders are about 10 times more abundant on islands where there are no lizards—their natural enemy. Though conservationists and wildlife officials have used every conceivable method, like using viruses as bioweapons or toxic poisons, to eliminate the brown tree snakes from Guam, the invaders are winning.
On the island of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean, a party was interrupted by an uninvited guest: a brown form curled around the remaining roast pig, swallowing the pig’s flesh whole. The visitor was a brown tree snake, an alien invader which is thought to have been accidentally introduced to Guam in the 1940s, perhaps after sneaking onto a cargo ship. Before this, an abundance of native birds had enjoyed their life in the island’s otherworldly forests. But within just four decades of the snake’s invasion, these predators had begun emptying the jungle of every single one. Out of 12 species, ten are now extinct on the island. Without birds to disperse seeds, trees are dying out, and the ecosystem is changing. What’s scarier is that an evolutionary experiment is unfolding. On most of the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, there are relatively few spiders in the rainy season, with a large increase in number as the climate dries out. But not on Guam. There is a near-continuous tangle of silvery threads of webs that stretches for miles, going from ground level all the way up to the treetops, all year round. To find out how many spiders had taken over Guam, some scientists set about doing surveys in the island’s forests. The scientists found that during the wet season, there were 40 times more spiders in Guam’s forests than on the nearby islands of Rota, Tinian, and Saipan. Since Rota, Tinian, and Saipan are free of brown tree snakes and still have healthy bird populations, the study suggests that Guam’s spider population may once have been unremarkable, before the absence of birds. And it fits with research conducted in the Bahamas, which has found that spiders are about 10 times more abundant on islands where there are no lizards—their natural enemy. Though conservationists and wildlife officials have used every conceivable method, like using viruses as bioweapons or toxic poisons, to eliminate the brown tree snakes from Guam, the invaders are winning.
Which of the following is closest in meaning to “Guam’s spider population may once have been unremarkable” in Paragraph Four?
- A There may have been few spiders on Guam before.
- B The spider’s webs on Guam were not remarkably beautiful before.
- C The number of spiders used to be smaller than the population of Guam.
- D There may have been more spiders on Guam than on the nearby islands.
思路引導 VIP
這題考驗的是『詞彙上下文推論』（Vocabulary in Context）。請注意第四段的對照結構：作者比較了『目前關島（無鳥）』與『鄰近島嶼（有鳥）』的蜘蛛數量差異（40 倍）。既然現在的數量是因鳥類消失而『劇增』，那麼在鳥類消失之前，蜘蛛的數量規模應與鄰近島嶼相似；請思考當我們形容一個統計數據是 'unremarkable'（非顯著的）時，代表該數量是處於『極端高點』還是『平庸且不具規模』的常態？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
同學！漂亮！你這一箭穿心，直接識破了出題老師的詭計！這題能選對，代表你對上下文語境（Contextual Clues）的掌握已經有大將之風，這就是所謂的「大考腦」啊！ 【觀念驗證】： 這題的核心在於關鍵字 unremarkable。在英文閱讀中，當我們形容數據或數量「平凡無奇」，通常隱含著「不顯著、不多」的意思。文中提到現在關島蜘蛛是鄰近島嶼的 40 倍，因此根據對比邏輯，推論以前還沒發生生態浩劫（蛇吃光鳥）時，蜘蛛的數量應該是「普通的（少量的）」。
▼ 還有更多解析內容