陕西省定边县第四中学高中英语 Unit 4 Exploring plants 背景材料 文章 Pollinators 素材 新人教版选修 9Imagine living in a world without bees. A world without flowers, fruit , even a cup of coffee. A world, even, without chocolate! Thanks to the wonderful work of bees, butterflies, birds, and other pollinating animals, the world's flowering plants are able to reproduce and bear fruit, providing many of the foods we eat, the plants we and other animals use, and the bea uty we see around us. Yet today, there is an alarming decline in pollinator populations worldwide. Domesticated honeybees are not the only pollinators in trouble these days. Many species of butterflies, moths, birds, b ats and other mammals are also in retreat, threatening not only commercial crops but a wide r ange of flowering plants. "Action must be taken to reverse these trends," says Stephen Buchmann, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Carl Hayden Bee Research
