1. Choose the best explanation.

1. Larva a) a substance that provides nourishment for the maintenance of life

2. Breed b) improve the quality or value of

3. Benefit c) an active immature form of an insect or other animal

4. Abandon d) develop a variety of plant or animal

5. Habitat e) an advantage or profit from something

6. Nutrient f) natural home or environment of an organism

7. Integral g) leave behind

8. Enrich h) necessary to make a whole complete

2. Join two sentences using connectives.

1. The beetles immediately disappear beneath the cow pats. Approximately 1500 beetles are released.

2. In the late 1960s the beetles were introduced. It was necessary to prevent flies from breeding.

3. The new generation of beetles leaves the nest. The abandoned burrows become an attractive habitat for soil – enriching earthworms.

4. Chemical fertilizer and dung would be washed by rain into rivers. The beetles were not introduced.

5. The beetles didn’t dispose of the dung. Cow pats would litter pastures and make grass inedible.

3. Complete the following sentences.

1. The dung beetles are known for … .

2. Controlling dung-breeding flies resulted in … .

3. Having adapted to new environment the dung beetles start … .

4. Apart from being a first-rate source of fertilizer the pastures … .

5. The abandoned by beetles burrows become … .

6. If the dung beetles didn’t nest on pastures … .

4. Put the jumbled sentences in the logical order.

1. The beetles immediately disappear beneath the pats and tunneling.

2. Chemical fertilizer and dung would be washed by rain into streams and rivers if it were not for the dung beetle.

3. Dung beetles were introduced into farming in the early 1960s to control dung-breeding flies.

4. There are some evident benefits of using dung beetles.

5. If the beetles didn’t dispose of the dung cow pats would litter pastures and grass inedible to cattle.

Unit XXVII

Key words and expressions: to lack, to cause, depressed, exposure, fluorescent, to be exposed to, a mood, melatonin.

Pre-reading tasks

Look at the title of the text and guess what the text is about.

Highs and Lows

Hormone levels - and hence our moods - may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that expended which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking m energy that is work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings' moods and performance.

It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that 'crimes against the person' rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30°C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good. Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5°C with others in water at 20°C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks.

Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn't, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behavior and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels.

Post-reading tasks

Look through the text to see if your guess was right. Is the head misleading?