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2 European Consortium for the Certificate of Attainment in Modern Languages (READING) – B2

Reading
Part One

You are reading an article about collecting specimens (examples of a species) for research. Some
parts are missing from the text (1–10). Find these parts from the list (A–P). However, there are more
parts provided than you will need.
There is an example already done for you.

Is Collecting Animals For Science a Noble Mission or a Threat?

Behind the scenes at the Museum of Natural History, there's a vast, warehouse-like room filled with
green metal cabinets. Inside the cabinets ….. 0 ….. laid out like little soldiers in a row. Every hour
someone reaches into a cabinet here and pulls out a bird. Perhaps a visiting scientist ….. 1 ….. a
species has been collected, to understand its geographic range. Sometimes a researcher wants to take a
sample from a specimen to do a lab analysis that could reveal what the bird ate, whether it was sick,
….. 2 …… .

The value of scientific collections and the constant need for adding new specimens is obvious to some
researchers but they were alarmed by …… 3 …….. in the journal Science. It warned that scientific
collection has the potential to hurt animal populations that are small and isolated. ….. 4 ……
collecting specimens is no longer required to describe a species.

Last year a professor was doing field work in the mountains of Costa Rica when he heard that a certain
tree frog, once thought to be extinct, ….. 5 ….. . A colleague went out that night to try to find this frog
but couldn't. In the morning, they heard that someone else had found one and collected it. This
experience left the professor feeling troubled: "Why do we actually need to take the animal when they
are just starting to show up again and we may actually be harming that population?" This team
concluded that instead of collecting one of the rediscovered frogs right away, scientists ….. 6 …. to
document its existence, like getting some of its DNA or taking photographs.

More than a hundred researchers from museums and universities around the world signed a letter to
Science that defends specimen collection as an essential tool. The researchers noted that an estimated
86 percent of species on the planet aren't yet known to science. " ….. 7 .….. , then we can't obtain the
data we actually need to conserve the species," says a fish specialist. She would not be convinced if
someone claimed to have a new fish species just based on photos and DNA because this could be
misleading. She points out that …. 8 ….. without collecting it.

This recent criticism of collecting may give the public the wrong idea. Before scientists go on a
collecting trip, they have to get all kinds of permission. When it's suggested one should cease
collecting because maybe there's a case when you don't know ….. 9 ….. , then that might give the
message that collecting generally should be stopped. Ceasing scientific collection entirely would be a
great harm.

The professor and his colleagues wanted to emphasize that scientists should be careful and think twice,
and seriously consider alternatives ….. 10 ….. for laboratory research. There needs to be more
discussion to make sure the desire to collect a species never delivers the final blow.