2015年GMAT：阅读单独还原.pdfVIP

Even more than mountainside slides of mud or snow, naturally occurring forest fires promote the survival of aspen trees. Aspens need for fire may seem illogical since aspens are particularly vulnerable to fires; whereas the bark of most trees consists of dead cells, the aspens bark is a living, functioning tissue that—along with the rest of the tree— succumbs quickly to fire. The explanation is that each aspen, while appearing to exist separately as a single tree, is in fact only the stem or shoot of a far larger organism. A group of thousands of aspens can actually constitute a single organism, called a clone, that shares an interconnected root system and a unique set of genes. Thus, when one aspen—a single stem—dies, the entire clone is affected. While alive, a stem sends hormones into the root system to suppress formation of further stems. But when the stem dies, its hormone signal also ceases. If a clone loses many stems simultaneously, the resulting hormonal imbalance triggers a huge increase in new, rapidly growing shoots that can outnumber the ones destroyed. An aspen grove needs to experience fire or some other disturbance regularly, or it will fail to regenerate and spread. Instead, coniferous trees will invade the aspen groves borders and increasingly block out sunlight needed by the aspens. 讲一种白杨树aspen,相比山体滑坡带来的土壤和雪水，自然的火灾更会促进他的生 长。这似乎有一点不合常理是因为aspen 特别容易受到火灾的伤害,因为不同于别的树 的树皮是死的，这种树的树皮是一层活的并有功能性的tissue，所以更容易连同树一 起被火烧死。 1 读万卷书 行万里路 这个现象的原因是因为aspen 外表虽然看上去是一棵树，其实是一个大得多的生物体 的某一个枝干stem。上千棵的aspen 其实组成了一个叫clone 的生物结构，这个生物 结构拥有一个root 根部组织和同一组基因。所以，当某一分支也就是一棵aspen 死 了，整个clone 都会受到影响。当这些枝干活着的时候，他们会给根部组织传递一种 荷尔蒙信号，这种信号会抑制别的枝干的生长。但当这个枝干死了的时候，他的荷尔 蒙信号也就消失了。如果这个clone 同时少了很多枝干，荷尔蒙的失调就会导致新的 枝干快速地生长，甚至超过死去的那些枝干。Aspen 树群经常需要火灾和别的干预，否 则他就不能再生与发展，而且这样的话另一种松柏coniferous trees 将会侵入 aspen 树群并且挡住aspen 树