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

  1. summer
  2. reaches
  3. farms
  4. winemakers
  5. insects
  6. descends
  7. centipedes
  8. roughly
  9. gardens
  10. 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

  1. alarmed
  2. basketball
  3. biting
  4. buffet
  5. centipedes
  6. chain
  7. check
  8. consume
  9. continuous
  10. descends
  11. eat
  12. ecosystem
  13. farms
  14. fermentation
  15. fight
  16. food
  17. fruits
  18. garden
  19. gardens
  20. grapes
  21. helpful
  22. humans
  23. impact
  24. inadvertently
  25. insects
  26. invertebrate
  27. large
  28. lives
  29. local
  30. making
  31. mites
  32. nearby
  33. nest
  34. pesticides
  35. poison
  36. pollinate
  37. population
  38. purposefully
  39. ranks
  40. reaches
  41. roughly
  42. sitting
  43. size
  44. spiders
  45. summer
  46. supporting
  47. swarm
  48. swat
  49. swells
  50. thousands
  51. top
  52. vegetables
  53. veritable
  54. vital
  55. wasps
  56. weeks
  57. wildlife
  58. winemakers
  59. worker
  60. workers