full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Kenny Coogan: Licking bees and pulping trees The reign of a wasp queen
Unscramble the Blue Letters
Although each worker only lives for rogluhy 3 weeks, the queen’s continuous egg-laying swells their ranks. In just one semumr, the nest rceheas the size of a basketball, supporting thousands of workers. Such a large population needs to eat, and the nearby garden provides a veritable buffet. As the swarm dnscdees, alarmed humans try to swat them. They even fight back with pesticides that purposefully poison wasps, and inadvertently impact a wide-range of local wildlife. But the wasps are actually vital to this ecosystem. Sitting at the top of the local invertebrate food chain, these insects keep spiders, mites, and cnetpeides, in check. Wasps consume crop-eating inestcs, maikng them particularly helpful for famrs and gndears. They even pollinate fruits and vegetables, and help wakrinmees by biting into their grapes and jump-starting fermentation.
Open Cloze
Although each worker only lives for _______ 3 weeks, the queen’s continuous egg-laying swells their ranks. In just one ______, the nest _______ the size of a basketball, supporting thousands of workers. Such a large population needs to eat, and the nearby garden provides a veritable buffet. As the swarm ________, alarmed humans try to swat them. They even fight back with pesticides that purposefully poison wasps, and inadvertently impact a wide-range of local wildlife. But the wasps are actually vital to this ecosystem. Sitting at the top of the local invertebrate food chain, these insects keep spiders, mites, and __________, in check. Wasps consume crop-eating _______, ______ them particularly helpful for _____ and _______. They even pollinate fruits and vegetables, and help __________ by biting into their grapes and jump-starting fermentation.
Solution
- summer
- reaches
- farms
- winemakers
- insects
- descends
- centipedes
- roughly
- gardens
- making
Original Text
Although each worker only lives for roughly 3 weeks, the queen’s continuous egg-laying swells their ranks. In just one summer, the nest reaches the size of a basketball, supporting thousands of workers. Such a large population needs to eat, and the nearby garden provides a veritable buffet. As the swarm descends, alarmed humans try to swat them. They even fight back with pesticides that purposefully poison wasps, and inadvertently impact a wide-range of local wildlife. But the wasps are actually vital to this ecosystem. Sitting at the top of the local invertebrate food chain, these insects keep spiders, mites, and centipedes, in check. Wasps consume crop-eating insects, making them particularly helpful for farms and gardens. They even pollinate fruits and vegetables, and help winemakers by biting into their grapes and jump-starting fermentation.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
unfertilized eggs |
2 |
Important Words
- alarmed
- basketball
- biting
- buffet
- centipedes
- chain
- check
- consume
- continuous
- descends
- eat
- ecosystem
- farms
- fermentation
- fight
- food
- fruits
- garden
- gardens
- grapes
- helpful
- humans
- impact
- inadvertently
- insects
- invertebrate
- large
- lives
- local
- making
- mites
- nearby
- nest
- pesticides
- poison
- pollinate
- population
- purposefully
- ranks
- reaches
- roughly
- sitting
- size
- spiders
- summer
- supporting
- swarm
- swat
- swells
- thousands
- top
- vegetables
- veritable
- vital
- wasps
- weeks
- wildlife
- winemakers
- worker
- workers