《2024年5年高考3年模拟高二英语选择性必修第一册外研版》

Ⅰ.阅读理解
主题语境：植物的防御 语篇类型：说明文 难易度：★★☆ 建议用时：8min
(2024成都树德中学期中)
Plants cannot run or hide, so they need other strategies to avoid being eaten. Some curl up their leaves, and others generate chemicals to make themselves taste bad if they sense animals drooling on them, chewing them up or laying eggs on them—all signals of an attack. New research now shows some flora can feel a plant - eating animal well before it launches an attack, letting a plant prepare preemptive (先发制人的) defense that even works against other pest species.
When ecologist John Orrock of the University of Wisconsin - Madison sprayed (喷洒) snail slime—a liquid the animals release as they slide along—onto soil, nearby tomato plants appeared to notice. They increased their levels of an enzyme (酶), which is known to prevent plant - eating animals. “None of the plants were ever actually attacked,” Orrock says. “We just gave them cues that suggested an attack was coming, and that was enough to cause big changes in their chemistry.”
Initially Orrock found this defense worked against snails; in the latest study, his team measured the slimy warning’s impact on another potential threat. The investigators found that hungry caterpillars (毛虫), which usually eat tomato leaves greedily, had no appetite for them after the plants were exposed to snail slime and activated their chemical resistance. “This nonspecific defense may be a strategy that benefits the plants by further improving their overall possibilities of survival,” says Orrock, who reported the results with his colleagues in March in Oecologia.
The finding that a snail’s approach can cause a plant response that affects a different animal made Richard Karban curious, a plant communications expert, who was not involved in the study. “It is significant that the plants are responding before being damaged and that these cues are having such far - ranging effects,” Karban says. “The research was comprehensive,” he adds, but he wonders how the tomato plants felt chemicals in snail slime that never actually touched them.
“That’s the million - dollar question,” Orrock says. He hopes future research will find out the mechanisms that enable plants to sense these relatively distant cues.
1. John Orrock sprayed a liquid onto soil near tomato plants to ________.
A. give them a warning
B. make them grow better
C. keep plant - eating animals away
D. inform plant - eating animals of danger
2. Why is the example of “caterpillars” mentioned in Paragraph 3?
A. To introduce another animal.
B. To confirm the result of the study.
C. To appeal to people to protect animals.
D. To analyze different resistance chemicals.
3. What does Richard Karban really want to know?
A. What the finding of the research is.
B. What the chemicals in the snail slime are.
C. Whether the research is of practical value.
D. How tomato plants become aware of danger.
4. What can be a suitable title for the text?
A. Watchful Plants
B. Greedy Animals
C. A Snail’s Approach
D. Defense Against an Attack

答案： 1.A 2.B 3.D 4.A