Environment shapes ants' 'personality' 环境塑造蚂蚁的"性格"

媒体英语会带大家一起学习 BBC 撰稿人在报道世界大事时常用到的单词和短语。

美国的一项研究显示，蚁群也有个性，而这种个性的形成是由环境所致。这项刊登在《皇家学会学报B辑》(Proceedings of the Royal Society B )上的研究报告说，许多由数以千百计蚂蚁组成的蚂蚁群显示了不同的行为表现，这点与人类非常相似。以下是BBC记者 Jonathan Webb的报道：

According to ecologists, having a personality means showing a consistent pattern of behaviour over time. Researchers from the University of Arizona studied colonies of rock ants across the western US, both by following them in the wild and by taking whole colonies back to the lab.

They found that certain risky behaviours, like foraging widely for food and responding aggressively to a threat, went together and colonies further north tended to take more of these risks.

The study suggests those more adventurous personalities could be an adaptation to the limited window of activity left by the long, snowy northern winter.