专题 07 入侵物种，地下杀手 --2023年高考英语外刊时文精读精练

2023年高考英语外刊时文精读精练 (7) Invasive species入侵物种 News from the underground地下“杀手” 主题语境：人与自然 主题语境内容：人与环境、人与动植物 【外刊原文】（斜体单词为超纲词汇，认识即可；下划线单词为课标词汇，需熟记。） Earthworms’ kindly image as aerators(通气设备), drainers(滤干器) and fertilisers(肥料) of field and garden buries a darker secret. They are actually fierce competitors with other invertebrates (无脊椎动物), consuming rotting(腐烂的) plant matter and tiny organisms , all of which might otherwise threaten a wide variety of soil dwellers(居民). That much is well known, not least from research conducted in northern North America. Here, worms were wiped out during the last ice age, which ended 12,000 years ago. They started returning, in the form of European invaders(入侵者), only a few centuries in the past. What have not been investigated much until now are the consequences of this underground killing for surface-living creatures. But that has just been corrected by Malte Jochum of Leipzig University, in Germany, and his colleagues, in a study just published