會自己種真菌的甲蟲

No one likes a moldy peach, so some farmers stop fungus from growing by dipping their produce in alcohol.

沒人喜歡長了霉的桃子，因此有的農民會通過把收成浸泡在酒里來防止真菌生長。

But that trick doesn』t work on ambrosia fungus, which fungus-eating beetles raise in 「gardens」 that have a ready supply of ethanol.

不過這項魔法並不適用於蛀道真菌，有一種喜歡吃真菌的甲蟲會在「花園」里通過穩定供應的酒精來養殖它們。

A new study suggests the alcohol not only helps the fungus grow, but it also inhibits microbial 「weeds」 that would otherwise crowd it out.

一項新的研究表明酒精不僅可以幫助真菌生長，還可以抑制「雜草」菌的生長，不然雜菌就會佔據優勢。

Ambrosia beetles survive by boring into trees and growing fungi inside.

殖菌蠹蟲的生存就是靠從小在樹裡面生長，然後在裡面種植真菌。

They prefer stressed or dying trees, which have more ethanol—an alcohol that』s produced naturally by the plant—flowing through their tissues.

它們更喜歡生病的或者垂死的樹木，裡面有更多的乙醇—是由植物自然生成的酒精—在內部組織里流淌。

To find out why, researchers took a closer to look at the black stem borer (pictured), an ambrosia beetle native to Asia that has become a tree-boring pest in North America.

為了找出原因，研究者們仔細查看了這種黑色樹榦里出生的蟲子（上圖），這種殖菌蠹蟲原產於亞洲，現在變成了北美的樹生害蟲。

The researchers collected fungus from black stem borers in an Ohio woodland.

研究者們從俄亥俄州林地里的黑色樹榦中的殖菌蠹蟲那裡收集到了真菌。

Then they grew the fungus, a species called Ambrosiella grosmanniae, on laboratory plates that contained food with different concentrations of ethanol.

然後他們種植了這種真菌，這是一種叫做Ambrosiella grosmanniae的品種，他們種在實驗室的含有不同濃度乙醇的食物的平板上。

They found that the fungus grew best when there was some ethanol—about 1% or 2%—but did worse when there were higher or lower concentrations, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

他們發現真菌在某個乙醇濃度時生長最好—大約1%到2%—不過超過或者低於這個濃度的時候都長得美那麼好，這隻研究團隊今天在《美國科學院論文集》上發表了結果。

What』s more, even small amounts of ethanol stalled the growth of microbial 「weeds」 that crowd out the beetles』 food source, like the bacterium Penicillium.

另外，即便是少量的乙醇以可以阻礙其他的微生物「雜草」生長成為優勢菌種，比如青黴素。

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