噪声—影响植物生长的双刃剑(2/3)

英语自学网

概述：根据美国科学家最新研究，噪声可能会对周边大面积植物生长产生影响，这种影响视植物种而不同。
Hints:
Francis
piñon
校对：betty0925
翻译&注解：cherryxyr
组长：cryforwhat
答疑：trans0829So the noise in the canyon is changing the way the birds behave. And that got Francis wondering maybe that's having an effect on plants that the birds interact with. Take piñon pine trees and scrub jays, for example.
"We know that jays are really important seed dispersers for a piñon pine."
The jays bury the seeds to snack on later, but inevitably, some get forgotten and grow into new pine trees.
Francis already knew there were fewer pine seedlings at noisy sites. Was that because the noise was keeping the jays away from their pine nuts?
Francis set up motion-triggered cameras at both noisy and quiet sites, put out some pine seeds, and waited.
As he predicted, jays avoided the noisy sites, not stashing any nuts there.
"We only found them removing seeds on the quiet sites."
That observation confirmed what Francis had expected: jays were only collecting and burying seeds at quiet sites.
But that wasn't the only thing the cameras saw. At the noisy sites, mice were gobbling up the seeds, leaving nothing behind to sprout.
So for the pine trees, it looked like the compressor noise was delivering a double whammy.
"We're just not getting as many seeds going into the seed bank in noisy areas, and the ones that do might be consumed by the mice that are there."所以峡谷里的噪音改变了鸟类的习性。这使弗朗西斯想到，也许噪音也会对与鸟类相互作用的植物产生影响。以矮松和灌丛鸦为例。
“我们知道丛鸦对于矮松来说是十分重要的种子传播者。”
丛鸦把种子埋起来供以后食用，但是一些种子难免会被忘记并长成了新的矮松。
弗朗西斯已经知道在嘈杂的地方松树的幼苗较少。这是因为噪声使丛鸦无法靠近松子吗？
弗朗西斯分别在嘈杂和安静的地方装上了运动触发式相机，放上一些松子，等待丛鸦的到来。
不出他所料，丛鸦避开了嘈杂的地方，没有在那里埋下一颗松子。
“我们只发现它们在安静的地方移动种子。”
此观察证实了弗朗西斯所预料的：丛鸦只在安静的地方收集、掩藏种子。
但是相机拍摄下来的不仅仅是这些。在嘈杂的地方，老鼠把种子全给吃光了，完全没有给种子发芽的机会。
因此对松树而言，压缩机的噪音给它们带来双重打击。
“我们在嘈杂地区就是没法让同样多的种子进入种子库以便繁衍，而进入种子库的那些则有可能被该地区的老鼠吃掉。”