Read the paragraphs and write down the topics and main ideas.

1. Most bees are solitary species. Many build their nests in or on the ground, and therefore
rely on key habitats being available and undisturbed. Some, like honeybees, are generalists,
meaning that they forage on a range of flowers; others are specialists, meaning that
they’re dependent on particular plant species being present in their environment. Take the
sunflower leafcutting bee, which collects pollen from sunflowers and builds nests out of
leaves, using its mandibles (like giant teeth attached to the front of its head) to dig down
into hard-packed soil and build a tunnel more than four times the length of its body. This
bee was once common across the grasslands of north America but, since more than 90 per
cent of these habitats have now been converted to agricultural use, it’s been driven out of
much of its native range. The rusty patched bumble bee, a brightly furred being that often
forms its nests in the abandoned burrows of other species, has a similar story: following
declines across 87 per cent of its historic habitat range, in North America it is now
officially listed as an endangered species. (https://aeon.co/essays/why-keeping-bees-means-
thinking-about-landscape-as-a-system)
Topic: Availability habitat of the bees
Main idea: Most bees build their nests in or on the ground, and therefore rely on key
habitats being available and undisturbed.

2. Four hundred years ago, Coffea arabica, a tropical shrub bearing glossy green leaves and
bright-red berries, was virtually unknown outside of the Arab world and the corner of
Ethiopia where it had been discovered in the ninth century—by a goatherd who, legend
has it, noticed that his animals would get frisky and stay up all night after nibbling its
berries. In the years since people figured out that coffee could affect us in similar ways, the
plant has done a great deal for our species, and our species in turn has done a great deal
for the plant. We have given it more than 27 million acres of new habitat all around the
world, assigned 25 million farming families to its care and feeding, and bid up its price until
it became one of the most valuable globally traded crops. Not bad for a shrub that is
neither edible nor particularly beautiful or easy to grow.
(https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/michael-pollan-coffee/606805/)
Topic: A brief history of the discovery of coffe
Main idea: In the years since people figured out that coffee could affect us in similar ways

3. Gathering data on glass plates and steering a telescope by eye may sound primitive, but
these observations led to some of the most groundbreaking discoveries in astronomy. In 1912,
the Harvard astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt used plate observations from a telescope
in Peru to discover that strange variable stars called Cepheids could be used to precisely
measure vast distances in space. Eleven years later, Edwin Hubble spotted a Cepheid in a
plate photograph from the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in California.
The plate showed what was then called the Andromeda nebula, but Hubble’s new distance
measurement led to the universe-altering revelation that the nebula was, in fact, the
Andromeda galaxy, and that countless other galaxies existed beyond our own. The
discovery of the chemistry of stars and of the expansion of the universe, the first tests
proving Einstein’s general theory of relativity — all of these happened thanks to
photographic plates and the long hours astronomers spent tied, almost physically, to
mountaintop telescopes.
(https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-covid-19-has-delayed-astronomy-20200811/)
Topic: Observation
Main idea: Gathering data on glass plates and steering a telescope by eye may sound
primitive, but these observations led to some of the most groundbreaking discoveries in
astronomy.