Many flowering plants woo insect pollinators and gently direct them to their most fertile blossoms by changing the color of individual flowers from day to day. Through color cues, the plant signals to the insect that it would be better off visiting one flower on its bush than another. The particular hue tells the pollinator that the flower is full of far more pollen than are neighboring blooms. That nectar-rich flower also happens to be fertile and ready to disperse its pollen or to receive pollen the insect has picked up from another flower. Plants do not have to spend precious resources maintaining reservoirs of nectar in all their flowers. Thus, the color-coded communication system benefits both plants and insects.

   For example, on the lantana plant, a flower starts out on the first day as yellow, when it is rich with pollen and nectar. Influenced by an as-yet-unidentified environmental signal, the flower changes color by triggering the production of the pigment anthromyacin. It turns orange on the second day and red on the third. By the third day, it has no pollen to offer insects and is no longer fertile. On any given lantana bush, only 10 to 15 per cent of the blossoms are likely to be yellow and fertile. But in tests measuring the responsiveness of butterflies, it was discovered that the insects visited the yellow flowers at least 100 times more than would be expected from haphazard visitation. Experiments with paper flowers and painted flowers demonstrated that the butterflies were responding to color cues rather than, say, the scent of the nectar.

   In other types of plants, blossoms change from white to red, others from yellow to red, and so on. These color changes have been observed in some 74 families of plants.

The word “haphazard” is closest in meaning to which of the following?

Câu hỏi liên quan

• The word “elements” is most similar to ..............

• Which would be the most appropriate headline for the article?

• From what we read we know that now Cambridge is _______.

ZUNIA12

• Which of the following phrases best explains the meaning of the word “verbal”?

• Algae remnants found in Africa are ..............

• The word “constrained” in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to     .

• The expression “in concert” in paragraph 3 could best be replaced by ________.

• What is the main idea of the passage?

• What happens to nitrogen in body tissues if a diver ascends too quickly?

• It can be inferred from the passage that _____________

• The purpose of the passage is to __________.

• The tone of the passage is that of .................

• What does the word concentric mean?

• Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the second paragraph of the passage?

• The writer says that when he was very young ________.

• The story about college life in Amerian movies are not ...............

• According to the passage, Porter’s Father was ___________.

• The word “immense” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.

• The Pilgrims immigrated to the New World because ..............

• Gestures __________.