Задание
Прочитайте текст и выполните задания 12–18. В каждом задании запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
On the eve of the Euro 2016 final between France and Portugal, ground staff at the gigantic Stade de France in Paris had left the stadium’s lights on, for security reasons. Attracted by the blinding floodlights, thousands upon thousands of migrating moths descended into the empty arena. Those not killed by the heat of the lamps eventually ended up among the grass of the playing surface, where, after the lights were turned off, they hid throughout the day of the big match. As evening fell, 80,000 spectators took their seats and the lights were turned back on. The sleeping moths stirred, and soon thousands were zigzagging among the players. Photographs taken that night show annoyed football officials picking moths off each other’s suits, while the swarm blocked the lenses of TV cameras and hung from the goalposts. The mingling of urban development with the natural world can throw up some weird and wonderful occurrences. Cities are like mad scientists, creating their own crazy ecological concoctions by throwing all kinds of native and foreign elements into the urban melting pot, then spicing it up with artificial light, pollution, impervious surfaces and a host of other challenges. Researchers around the globe are documenting how globalisation and urbanisation are changing the behaviour and evolution of animals. Indeed, evolutionary biologists no longer need to travel to remote places like the Galapagos to discover their holy grail: the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution. The process is going on right in the very cities where they live and work. In tune with their human population, cities have been assembled from immigrants from around the globe. Either intentionally or accidentally, people have been ferrying flora and fauna across the world for as long as they have been trading and travelling.
Places where human activity reaches fever pitch abound with exotic species. These urban ecosystems are formed not by ages of evolution or the slow colonisation by species under their own steam and of their own choice, but by human diligence alone. And that human urbanisation has had a sometimes surprising impact on the behaviour of animals. Researchers in the US found that the wingspan of American cliff swallows, which took up the habit of colonising concrete highway bridges in the 1980s, had decreased by about two millimetres a decade since then. Not much, and perhaps not really worth noticing if their measurements on the roadkill had not shown the exact opposite pattern: by the 2010s, the wings of dead birds by the roadside were about half a centimetre longer than those of live birds still happily flapping along. Also, even though the pressure of traffic had remained the same or even increased, the numbers of dead birds declined by almost 90%. The shape of a bird’s wing is not something that evolution can mess with impunity. It is very closely wedded to a bird’s way of life. Long pointed wings are better for fast flying in a straight line, while short rounded wings are good for making rapid turns or for quickly taking off. As things stand, cities are still a new phenomenon on Earth, and most urban animals and plants have only begun adapting to them for the past few centuries, millennia at the most. But if we can sustain our urbanised existence into the distant future (a big if), future generations might see the evolution of a unique and truly urban ecosystem.
13. Which of the following did NOT happen after the lights were turned back on?
1) People were picking moths off their suits.
2) Thousands of moths swarmed the stadium.
3) Swarms were flying among the football players.
4) 80,000 of spectators were frightened of the moths.