9月27日午间英语新闻：研究人员对全球蚂蚁数进行史上最彻底的统计

Do spiders sleep? Study suggests they may snooze like humans
蜘蛛会睡觉吗？研究表明它们可能像人类一样打盹

It’s a question that keeps some scientists awake at night: Do spiders sleep? Daniela Roessler and her colleagues trained cameras on baby jumping spiders at night to find out. The footage showed patterns that looked a lot like sleep cycles: The spiders’ legs twitched, and parts of their eyes flickered. The researchers described this pattern as a “REM sleep-like state.” In humans, REM, or rapid eye movement, is an active phase of sleep when parts of the brain light up with activity and is closely linked with dreaming. Other animals, including some birds and mammals, have been shown to experience REM sleep. But creatures like the jumping spider haven’t gotten as much attention, so it wasn’t known whether they got the same kind of sleep, said Roessler, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany.
这是一个让一些科学家夜不能寐的问题：蜘蛛会睡觉吗？丹妮拉‧罗斯勒和她的同事在夜间用相机对准小跳蛛幼蛛拍摄，以找出答案。画面显示，这些模式看起来很像睡眠周期：蜘蛛的腿抽搐，部分眼睛来回转动。研究人员将这种模式描述为“快速眼动睡眠状态”。人类睡眠的快速眼动（REM）指的是睡眠过程中的活跃阶段，大脑有一部分处于清醒活动状态，与做梦有密切关系。其他动物，包括一些鸟类和哺乳动物，已被证明会经历快速眼动睡眠。但德国康斯坦茨大学的进化生物学家罗斯勒说，像跳蛛这样的生物并没有受到那么多关注，所以不知道它们是否有同样的睡眠。

重点词汇：
1、 twitch
英 /twɪtʃ/ 美 /twɪtʃ/
v. （使）抽搐，（使）抽动；猛拉，急扯；扯绳勒（马）
n.（肌肉的）抽搐，颤动；猛的一拉，一动；（一阵）感觉；马勒

2、flicker
英 /ˈflɪkə(r)/ 美 /ˈflɪkər/
v. 闪烁，摇曳；闪现，一闪而过；（表情）掠过；（眼睛）瞟过；颤动，快速抖动；扑动翅膀；使……突然动一下
n. （火焰，光的）闪烁，摇曳；（感觉或情绪的）闪现，一闪而过；（身体部位的）小而快的动作；（电影或电视每秒帧数过少时的）图像闪烁；（鸟）扑翅䴕属

Most thorough assessment to date of global population of ants 
研究人员对全球蚂蚁数进行史上最彻底的统计

Researchers have made the most thorough assessment to date of the global population of ants — insects that have colonized almost everywhere on the planet — and the estimated total is a mind-blowing 20 quadrillion of them. The ants' biomass was higher than that of wild mammals and birds combined, and it reaches 20 percent of the human biomass. They have thrived since the age of dinosaurs, with the oldest-known ant fossil dating back about 100 million years to the Cretaceous Period. There are more than 12,000 known species of ants, which generally are black, brown or red in color and possess bodies segmented into three parts.
研究人员对全球蚂蚁的数量进行了迄今为止最彻底的评估，一种遍布地球上几乎所有地方的昆虫，总数令人震惊，约有2亿亿只。所有蚂蚁的生物量超越野生哺乳动物和鸟类的总和，达到了人类生物量的20%。自恐龙时代以来，它们就一直繁衍生息，已知最古老的蚂蚁化石可以追溯到大约1亿年前的白垩纪时期。已知的蚂蚁种类超过12000种，它们的颜色一般为黑色、棕色或红色，身体分为三部分。

重点词汇：
biomass
英 /ˈbaɪəʊmæs/ 美/ˈbaɪoʊmæs/
n.生物量；生物质能燃料