2019年经济学人 害虫防治:弦理论(2)（在线收听）

The other three bushes were left untouched and monitored as controls.

留下其他三处灌木以作为对照。

The team followed up by counting ants periodically on specific sections of the coffee bushes during the days that followed.

之后团队定期计算咖啡灌木中某一特定部分的蚂蚁数量

To decide whether the newly established string highways were indeed granting protection,

为了确定新建立的线高速确实提供了保护作用，

three days after building the connections Dr Jimenez-Soto and Dr Morris

在建立连接三天后，Jimenez-Soto博士和Morris博士

attached white cards bearing ten dead adult female borer beetles to the trunks of all the coffee bushes in the research sites.

将带有十只成年雌性死虫的白色卡片附在了所有被研究咖啡灌木的树枝上。

They monitored these cards for half an hour, noting ant activity on them, and also recording how many beetles were removed during that period.

他们对这些卡片进行了半小时监控，在此期间内，他们记录蚂蚁在此的活动，以及被移除甲虫的数量。

The string highways proved popular with the ants. Three-quarters of them turned into ant trails,

事实证明线高速很受蚂蚁的欢迎。三分之一的线高速都变成了蚂蚁的路径，

and at least some were used in this way in every one of the study sites.

并且在每个试验址中，至少有一些被以这种方式使用。

Presumably as a consequence, ant activity on bushes connected by strings to cuaniquil trees more than doubled,

大概率结果是，和cuaniquil树连接后，蚂蚁在灌木中的活动翻倍，

while that on unconnected neighbours saw no statistically significant change.

而未被连接的灌木在统计上没有明显变化。

This extra activity resulted in more beetle-scavenging.

这种额外的活动导致更多的甲虫被清除。

Coffee bushes connected by string to a cuaniquil had an average of three of the carded insects removed by the ants during the 30-minute window,

在30分钟时间内，用线将咖啡灌木和一棵cuaniquil树相连，平均有三只死虫被蚂蚁拖走，

triple the rate for unconnected bushes. Dead beetles on cards are clearly easier prey than live ones hidden in coffee berries.

是未连接灌木比率的三倍。卡片上的死甲虫显然比咖啡浆果中藏着的活虫更好捕食。

Nevertheless, this is an encouraging result for plantation owners.

然而，这对种植园主而言是个鼓舞人心的结果。

If further experiments back these results up

如果后续试验能够为这一结果提供支持，

it may be that the coffee-borer problem can be alleviated by a combination of planting the right sorts of shade trees and the wise deployment of some balls of string.

那么通过种植正确的遮荫树种并合理布局一些线球，咖啡蛀虫的问题就能得到缓解。