A group of British children aged between eight and 10 had their school project on bees published by the prestigious Royal Society in a world scientific first, the society announced.
The pupils from Blackawton primary school in the southwestern English county of Devon investigated how bumblebees see colors and patterns using a series of experiments in a local churchyard.
The findings by the 25 children, drawn up with a scientist who lives in the area, have been published in Biology Letters, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Royal Society.
Photo: EPA
照片：歐新社
“The field of insect color and pattern vision is generally poorly understood and the findings reported by the school children represent a genuine advance in the field,” the Royal Society said in a statement.
The headmaster of the school, Dave Strudwick, said his pupils “devised, conducted and wrote up an experiment which resulted in genuinely novel findings, so they deserve to be published.”
The children used patterns drawn with colored pencil to see whether the insects would go for sugar water and avoid salt water.
“We discovered that bumblebees can use a combination of color and spatial relationships in deciding which color of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before,” they concluded in the paper.
Biology Letters editor Brian Charlesworth said their paper was a “world first in high quality scientific publishing.”
(afp)
英國皇家學會表示，一群八歲至十歲英國學童的學校報告，登上該學會出版的期刊，為科學史上首見。
英國西南部德翁郡布萊克頓小學學童，在當地教堂庭院進行一連串實驗，研究大黃蜂如何感知顏色和形狀。
二十五名小學生的研究，是與住在同區的科學家共同完成，並刊登在皇家學會出版的同儕審查期刊《生物學通訊》。
皇家學會在聲明中指出：「關於昆蟲對色彩與形狀視覺的了解很少，這群學童的研究是此領域的一大躍進。」
布萊克頓小學校長大衛‧施維德維克表示，他的學生「構思過程、進行研究並完成實驗報告，得到真正創新的發現，他們的研究成果值得發表。」
這群學童利用彩色鉛筆繪出不同圖形，來研究大黃蜂如何找到糖水並避開鹽水。
報告結論指出：「我們發現大黃蜂會根據顏色及地緣關係，來決定要採哪朵花的花蜜。我們也覺得科學很酷、很有趣，因為你可以做一些其他人從未做過的事。」
《生物學通訊》編輯布萊恩‧查爾斯華斯認為，學童的研究報告是「世界首見、高水準的科學研究。」
（法新社/翻譯：林亞蒂）
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