A strong wind can be a dangerous thing — sometimes it is powerful enough to knock you off your feet. But to plants, the wind is a source of new life, carrying them or their spores (孢子) thousands of miles.
A NASA satellite called QuikSCAT has discovered highways of wind over the Earth's oceans. Scientists believe these invisible roads may explain why many nonflowering plants, such as mosses (苔) and lichens (地衣), grow where they do.
The satellite is able to send microwaves (微波) from space to the surface of the ocean. The pattern of signals that come back shows which way the winds are blowing.
Using this data, the scientists studied a group of islands in the southern hemisphere (半球), near Antarctica．Winds tend to blow anticlockwise (逆时针) in this region, but there are lots of local differences.
When the researchers compared these local patterns to botanical (植物学) data, they found that the wind had an important effect on where species of mosses, lichens, and other nonflowering plants grow.
For example, Bouvet Island and Heard Island, share 30 per cent of their moss species, 29 per cent of liverworts (叶苔), and 32 per cent of lichens — even though they are 4,430 kilometers apart. In contrast, Gough Island and Bouvet Island, separated by just 1,860 kilometers of sea, share only 16 per cent of mosses and 17 per cent of liverworts. They have no lichens in common.
Ferns (蕨类植物) and flowering plants don't travel as well in the wind, so they don't show the same kinds of distribution (分布) patterns.
小题1:This story is about _____.
A．the discovery of wind highways
B．how wind travels
C．how wind affects different plants
D．one function of the wind小题2:The underlined word "data" in the fourth paragraph means _____.
A．signal
B．pattern
C．information
D．research小题3: Which of the following is wrong?
A．Bouvet Island, Heard Island and Gough Island are all in the southern hemisphere.
B．Winds in the researched area blow anti-clockwise.
C．The scientists shouldn't base this research on how winds affect where ferns grow.
D．Without the discovery of QuikSCAT, the research wouldn't have made sense.小题4: Which of the following diagrams shows the correct position of the islands?
