Timing is everything in nature. From the opening notes of a songbird’s spring ___(21)___ to the seasonal percussion ofsnapping shrimp, every important ecological process lives and dies by a clock. Flowering. Egg laying. Breeding. Migration. It’sas true on the Mongolian steppe as it is in the Arabian Sea or a Costa Rican rainforest. Centuries of evolution has ___(22)___these patterns. Now climate change is ___(23)___ them.
      And that is reshaping life for almost everything. In every ocean and across every continent, seasons are in ___(24)___.Earlier warmth, delayed cold, and shifts in the frequency and fierceness of precipitation are ___(25)___ with established rhythms in both predictable and unexpected ways. So researchers the world over are straining to document the timing of life cycle events,a scientific ___(26)___ known as phenology. That timing is being upended by our fossil fuel emissions.
      Changes are discovered almost everywhere scientists look. The timing of leaf appearance and leaf dropping has alreadyshifted ___(27)___ across more than half the planet. Humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine are gathering 19 days later than theyonce did, while jack mackerel, hake, and rockfish are ___(28)___ earlier in the North Pacific. In North Dakota’s Red River Valley,scientists found 65 of 83 bird species arriving earlier, some by as much as 31 days. South Carolina’s dwarf salamanders arearriving at breeding grounds 76 days later.
      What’s harder to grasp is the ___(29)___ of the consequences—for plants, animals, and us. If everything shifted in the samedirection and by roughly the same amount, our new calendar might prove ___(30)___. As with daylight saving time, we’d muddlethrough together. But that’s not how nature works.
【題組】21.(AB) dramatically (AC) undermined (AD) severity (AE) recalibrating (BC) morbid(BD) smoothly (BE) chorus (CD) discipline (CE) digression (DE) spawning(ABC) honed (ABD) insignificant (ABE) flux (BCD) toying (BCE) rescinded