R514011

READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.

The Ant and the Mandarin

. .
In' 1476, the farmers of Berne in Switzerland decided there was only
one way to, rid their fields of the cutworms attacking their crops. They
took the pests to . court. The worms were tried. found guilty and excom­
municated by the archbishop. In China, farmers had a more practi­
cal approach to pest control. Rather than relying on divine interven~
tion, they put their faith in frogs. ducks and ants. Frogs and ducks
were encouraged to snap up the pests in the paddies and the occa­
sional plague of locusts. But the notion· of biological control began
with an ant. More specifically. it started with the predatory ' yellow '
citrus ant Oecophylla smaragdina, which has been polishing off pests in the
orange groves of southern China for at least 1700 years, The yellow citrus
ant is a type of weaver ant. which binds leaves and twigs with silk ,to form
a neat, tent-like nest. In the beginning, farmers made do with the odd ants' ,
nests 'here and there. But it wasn't long before gtowing demand led to the
development of a thriving trade in nests and a n~w, type o-f agriculture - ant
farming . .

Citrus fruits evolved in the Far East and the Chinese discovered the delights
oftheit flesh earry on;-As the a'D cestrai"ho'm e of orange.s, lemon: an~a
pomelos, China 'also h~s the g~~test div\9rsity 'of citrt1:s. pes(s. 'And. th,:e j:re~s
'that produce the sweetest fruits~ the mandatins _. or .kan .- . ,attract a host of
-plantreating in;3ects, from ISlack 'artts and ' sap- suc.kiru( 'mealy bugst6 leaf-'
. devouring caterpillars, With so mc}ny enemies, fruit grp ..ye,rs clearly h.ad" to
have some way of protecting their orchards. - .,: .
The West did not discover the Chinese orange growers' secret weapon until
the early 20th century. At the time, Florida was suffering an epidemic of
citrus canker and in 1915 Walter Swingle, a plant physiologist working for
the US Department of Agriculture, was sent to China in search of varieties of
orange that were resistant to the disease. Swingle spent some time studying
the citrus orchards around Guangzhou, and there he came across the stOry of
the cultivated ant. These ants, he was told, were "grown" by the people of a
small village negrby who s.old them to the orange growers by the nestful.

The earliest report of citrus ants at work among the orange trees appeared in
a book on troP.ical ana subtropical botany written by Hsi Han in AD 304. "The
people of Chiao':"'Chih sell in their markets ants in bags of rush matting. The
nests are like' silk. The bags are all attached to twigs and leaves which, with
the ants inside the nests, are for sale. The ants are reddish-yellow in' colo~,
bigger than 0rdil1ary ants. In the south if the kan trees donQt have this kind
of ant, the fruit~ Will all be damaged by many harmful insects; and ,not a single
fruit will be perfect." ,. ,
.'
Initially, farmers .relied
. . -
on nests which they collected. from the wild or boUght
"
in the market ~ - where trade in nests was brisk. "It is said that in th~ south
.orange trees which are free of ants will have wormy fruits. There{ore:' the
people race to buy nests for their orange trees," wrote Liu Hsun in Strange
Things Noted in the South, written in about 890.

Tae business quickly became more sop'histicated. From the 10th cent\1ry,
country people began to trap ants ,in 'artificial nests baited with fat. ',' Fruit­
growing families buy,these ants frorn. vendors who make a tmsitle s s o~ col­
lecting and s elliIig su-ch creatures," wrote Chuang Cl1i-Yu in' 1130. "They
trap them by filU~g hogs' or sheep' s ' bladders with rat and 'placingthem
w~th tb,ec8vities open next to the ants' .nests. They wait 1,lfl,til, the ants hav~
migr ated
. into the 1i>ladde
. . rs and take t hem away. This is lOiown as 'rearing
. ~

.
orange ants' ," F(UJUers
~
attached the bladders to' their trees, ana in ' time the
.
antsspt ead to- other trees .and, built new nests.
,
- , '.
'
,

By the 17th cent , growers were building bamboo wa1kway~ lktwe~n th~ir.
trees to speed the colonisation of their 'orchards. The. ants ran along Hi'ese
narrow bridges froI:\l one tree to ,anQt;qer and establisli,e d nests "by the hun­
dreds of'thousands".
 ..
· Swingle was just as impressed . Yet despite his. reports, many Western '
biologists 'wer.e sceptical: In Hie West. the idea of usjng one ionsect t6 destroy '
another was new and highly controversial. The first breakthrough had 'c ome
in 1888, :when the infant Oralfge industry in Galif6rilia had been, saved from
extinction by the Australian vedali a beetle'. This -beetle' was the oniy thing
· that had made any inroad lnto the explosion of c~ttony cushion scale 'that .wa~
threatening to destroy the state's citrus crops. But, as Swingle now knew,
California's "first" was . nothing of the' so·r t. The Chinese had been expert in
biocontrol for many centuries.

The long tradition of 8I}.ts i~ the Chinese orchards only began to waver in

'. the 1950s and ' l960s witiJ, the introductioJl ,of powerful organic insecticides~ ,

AlthOl,lgh most' fruit growers switched to .chemieals,· a few, hung onto their

ants ..Those ' who ' abandoned arits' in favour ' of chemicals quickly became Clis­

illusioned. As costssoFlred and ,pests began to develop resistance· to the "

chemicals, gro,?,ers began to rev.ive,the old ant patrots. TheY had good reason

.' to have faith in their, ~nsect workfoi ee.

Research in the early 1960s showed that as long as there were enough ants
in the trees, they did an excellent job of dispatching some pests - mainly the
larger- insects f~. and had 'modest s_ucce
. . ~s
- against others. Trees ' with. yellow
· ants produced almost '20 per cent moreheaJthy leav:es than those without.
More re~ent triats have ' shown that these trees yield just as big a crop as
· those ,protecteJi by e.x pensive·chemical spr ays,
. ~ ! #­

..
· One appare~t drawback of usip:g~ ants - . ~nd one of the main reasons for the '
earlY'. scepticism by .Western 'scientists ­ was that "citrus
. ,}" ~ . . - ants.' 00 notJiing'
- ­ to
control mealy, pugS, waxy-qJated l;lcale ~insepts whidi can do considerable
• dam~·~~e to fi;,Uit. tre?,s.) ri faft, t he an s pr,~tect meary bugs iri' ex~hang~ fo'r 'the
, sweet hopeydew" they seere te~ The orange growers always .de:Qiedtnis' waS', a,
• • • " • " .' ~ , ",:- . I

· problem
. .
but,, West ern SCientists' thou.ght they knew better.
[ "
. '

~, I

Orange growers ' who re~y on ~~\TorpUS aRts rather than pqiSQnous chemi";"
,. cals' dl-aintain.a better balance of. species in t eir .orchar s~ WJille the ants
· deal with the Qigger insect pests , ,ather pr:edaie:>ry speeies keep down the'
numbers of smaller pests such as scale insects and aphids . In the long mm,'
ants do a lot less damage than ohemicals ­ and they're certainly mor e effec­
~ , than excolPmunicatian.-.....,.__~.........:~<.=.:....,~~~~...;p.J;,C:!!~~ei:aia~Wt(¥._".t::I...,
Questions 14-18

Look at the following events (Questions 14-18) and the list ofdates below.

Match each event with the correct time A-G.

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14 The first description of citrus ants being traded in the market place.
15 Swingle came to Asia for research.
16 The first record of one insect is used to tackle other insects in the western
world.
17 Chinese fruit growers started to use pesticides in place of citrus ants.
18 Some Chinese fanners returned to the traditional bio-method.

List of Dates
A 1888
B AD 890
C AD 304
D 1950s
E 1960s
F 1915
G 1130
Questions 19-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 19-26 on your answer sheet write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

19 China has more orange pests than any other country in the world.
20 Swingle came to China to search for an insect to bring back to the US.
21 Many people were very impressed by Swingle's discovery.
22 Chinese farmers found that pesticides became increasingly expensive.
23 Some Chinese farmers abandoned the use of pesticide.
24 Trees with ants had more leaves fall than those without.
25 Fields using ants yield as large crop as fields using chemical pesticides.
26 Citrus ants often cause considerable damage to the bio-environment of the
orchards.