The fruit-tree pinhole borer (针孔蛀虫), as its name implies, makes holes in fruit trees. It lays its eggs and raises its young in the galleries thus created . Yet the beetles (甲虫) do not feed directly on the wood they bore into. Instead, they devour fungi (真菌) that grow on the wood thus exposed.

Researchers have long suspected that this is a form of farming, because they have evidence that the beetles carry spores (孢子) of their preferred crop, R. sulphurea, into their smallholdings — in effect, sowing it there.

Observations of natural fruit-tree pinhole-bore r dwellings suggest that R. sulphurea grows in them more abundantly (大量地) than might be expected, given all the fungal competition around — but not why. To check whether the beetles are, indeed, weeding their crop, Janina Diehl and Peter Biedermann of the University of Freiburg did an experiment.

In the laboratory, they had mother beetles of the little wood bore restablish nests, in which the typical fungal gardens formed. But before the beetles had started laying their eggs, they collected all of the beetles and then returned half to their dwellings while leaving the other nests empty. Genetic analysis of the fungal gardens after 40 days showed that the presence of the beetles had greatly changed the fungal community. Twenty days after that, they sampled the gallery walls for fungi.

As they had hoped and expected, R. sulphurea was much more abundant in beetle-tended galleries than in those without residents. In the former, it made up half of the fungal mass extracted. In the latter, less than a third. These beetles are indeed weeding their crop.

“Further research into how exactly the beetles suppress the growth of weed fungi could alsoprovide worthwhile insights for human agriculture, which is struggling with weed resistance, for example,” says Biedermann. “It’s highly exciting for us to see how nature has been doing this for 60 million years. We humans can still learn something from these mechanisms.”

【小题1】What does the underlined word “devour” in paragraph 1 mean?

A．Sow.

B．Tend.

C．Eat.

D．Move.

【小题2】In which aspect were the two groups of nests different?

A．The number of the mother beetles.	B．The presence of the beetles.
C．The quality of food fungi.	D．The types of weed fungi.

【小题3】What did Diehl find about the fruit-tree pinhole borer?

A．They weed crops.	B．They feed on fruit.
C．They live in groups.	D．They lay eggs in trees.

【小题4】What can be learned from Biedermann’s words?

A．The research findings are of little value.

B．Measures should be taken to protect the beetles.

C．Fungi cause much damage to human agriculture.

D．Further research to the beetles might benefit farmers.