IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2026 - Q1 Test 2 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2026 - Q1 Test 2 được lấy từ cuốn sách Forcast Test 2026 - Q1 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2026 - Q1 Test 2 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1
Donald Johanson was uncertain about the nature of the elbow bone he found in Afar.
2
Several bones were found by Donald Johanson at the same site in Afar.
3
The experts realised the importance of the discovery at Afar.
4
It was the upper part of the skeleton that had suffered the least damage.
5
The skeleton’s measurements helped Johanson’s team to decide if it was male or female.
Question 6 - 14
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Lucy
Physical features
- Jaws and skull like those of an ape.
- Braincase similar in size to that of a chimp.
- Long
6.
.
Movement
- The positioning and shape of her pelvis made it clear that she walked like a human.
- Upright movement possibly started among the
7.
of trees.
- Probably moved to the
8.
in search of food.
Diet and eating habits
- Analysis of food in the
9.
of the skeletons of early humans shows changes in their diet.
- It is likely that meat and grasses were substituted for
10.
.
-
11.
that were located close to Lucy suggest these were also part of her diet.
-
12.
that were found had marks on them, possibly made by tools used for eating.
Comparisons with modern-day humans
- Modern-day humans have a longer
13.
than Lucy did.
- The
14.
of modern-day humans appear to develop later than Lucy’s did.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 15 - 20
The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
From the list of headings below choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph.
Write the appropriate numbers i-x
List of Headings
I
The saxophone's popularity falls
II
The saxophone takes centre stage
III
Success abroad
IV
A difficult decision
V
Two versions - the saxophone's early success
VI
A child of science and sound
VII
Problems fitting in and how they were solved
VIII
New sounds and new audiences
IX
The inventor’s riches
15
Paragraph B
16
Paragraph C
17
Paragraph D
18
Paragraph E
19
Paragraph F
20
Paragraph G
Question 21 - 23
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
While the other three jazz instruments were first played during the , the saxophone did not appear until much later. Sax's father also had a key role in the development of musical instruments, including the . Like the trumpet, trombone and clarinet, the saxophone also owes much of its early success to its use in music.
Question 24 - 27
Look at the following questions and the list of people below.
Match each question with the correct person, A-F.
Write the correct letter, A-F.
List of Findings
A
Coleman Hawkins
B
Charlie Parker
C
Edouard Lefebre
D
Kenny G
E
Ornette Coleman
F
Sidney Bechet
24
Introduced the instrument to new places and new people.
25
Chose to play the saxophone over another instrument because he thought it was more suited to his style of music.
26
Was responsible for making the saxophone as important to jazz as other instruments were.
27
Became popular while playing the instrument without a backing band.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 28 - 33
Reading Passage has eight paragraphs A-H
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H
28
Two things at which leaf-cutter ants have succeeded but humans have failed.
29
A comparison between the nests of leaf-cutter and lower attine ants.
30
A reference to how much earlier ants began farming than people.
31
The effect Escovopsis has on ant communities.
32
The advantage for lower attine ants of growing a range of funguses.
33
The discovery of the age of the attine ant funguses.
Question 34 - 38
Look at the following features and the list of ants below.
Match each feature with the correct type of ants, A-C.
Write the correct letter, A-C.
List of Findings
A
leaf-cutter ants
B
lower attine ants
C
both leaf-cutter and lower attine ants
34
The use of dead vegetation to cultivate their fungus
35
Very small ants that keep the fungus free of foreign organisms
36
The ability to safely eat harmful plants
37
The cultivation of a single fungus
38
A nest with a very large number of rooms for growing fungus
Question 39 - 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.
39
What does the writer say about Cameron Currie’s research?
A
No previous work had been done in this area.
B
Earlier studies did not support his theory.
C
Textbooks on this subject lacked specific detail.
D
Currie’s initial theory had proven to be incorrect.
40
Using a microscope, Currie was the first to discover that the body of attine ants....
A
has a white covering.
B
is covered in wax.
C
is poisonous to humans.
D
has a substance useful to humans.
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
What Lucy Taught Us
A scientific finding in east Africa has changed our understanding of how humans have developed.
On a Sunday morning, in late November 1974, a team of scientists were digging in an isolated spot in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Surveying the area, palaeoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted a small piece of bone. Straight away, he recognised it as coming from the elbow of a human ancestor. And there were plenty more. 'As I looked up the slopes to my left, I saw bits of the skull, a chunk of jaw, a couple of vertebrae,' says Johanson.
It was immediately obvious that the skeleton was a significant find, because the sediments at the site were known to be 3.5 million years old. 'I realised this was part of a skeleton that was older than three million years,' says Johanson. It was the most ancient early human ever found. Later it became apparent that it was also the most complete - 40% of the skeleton had been preserved.
At the group's campsite that night, Johanson played a Beatles song called 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds', and, as the feeling was that the skeleton was female due to its size, someone suggested calling it Lucy. The name stuck and Johanson says, 'All of a sudden, she became a person.' But the morning after the discovery, the discussion was dominated by questions. How old was Lucy when she died? Did she have children? And might she be our direct ancestor? Nowadays, we're starting to get the answers to some of these questions.
According to Johanson, Lucy had an incredible combination of primitive and derived features, which had not been seen before. Her skull and jaws were more ape-like than those of other groups of early humans. Her braincase was also very small, no bigger than that of a chimp. She had a hefty jaw, a low forehead and long dangly arms.
For Johanson, it was immediately apparent that Lucy walked upright. That's because the shape and positioning of her pelvis reflected a fully upright gait. Lucy's knee and ankle also preserved and seemed to reflect bipedal walking. Later studies of feet offer even more evidence. As an upright walker, Lucy strengthened the idea that walking was one of the selective pressures driving human evolution forwards. Early humans did not need bigger brains to take defining steps away from apes. Extra brainpower only came over a million years later with the arrival of the species Homo erectus, meaning upright man. Though big brains would clearly be important later, walking remains one of the traits that makes us uniquely human.
She may have walked like a human, but Lucy spent at least some of her time up in the trees as chimpanzees and orangutans still do today. It may be that upright walking evolved in the trees, as a way to walk along branches that would otherwise be too flexible. It's not clear why Lucy left the safety of the trees. It is thought that savannahs were gradually opening up, so trees were spaced further apart. But hunting for food may have been the real reason for heading to the ground, says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. In line with this idea, recent evidence suggests that the diet of early humans was changing at that time.
Studies of the remains of food trapped on preserved human teeth indicate that several species, including Lucy's, were expanding their diet around 3.5 million years ago. Instead of mostly eating fruit from trees, they began to include grasses and possibly meat. This change in diet may have allowed them to range more widely, and to travel around more efficiently in a changing environment. Fossilised crocodile and turtle eggs were found near her skeleton, suggesting that Lucy died while foraging for them in a nearby lake.
How did early humans process all these new foods? Later species, like Homo erectus, are known to have used simple stone tools, but no tools have ever been found from this far back. However, in 2010 archaeologists uncovered animal bones with scratches that seem to have been made by stone tools. This suggests that Lucy and her relatives used stone tools to eat meat. There have since been heated debates over whether or not the marks were really made by tools. But if they were, it is not surprising, says Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
It also seems that Lucy's childhood was much briefer than ours and that she had to fend for herself from a young age. We know that Lucy was a full-grown adult because she had wisdom teeth and her bones had fused. But unlike modern humans, she seems to have grown to full size very quickly, and time of death was when she was around 12 years old. In line with that, a recent study of a 3-year-old early human suggested that their brains matured much earlier than ours do.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
False
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài True / False / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: Donald Johanson was uncertain about the nature of the elbow bone in Afar
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khóa: “Donald Johanson”, “elbow bone”, “Afar”
→ Dựa vào từ khoá,tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 1, nơi nói về việc Johanson tìm thấy xương khuỷu tay, phản ứng ban đầu của ông với phát hiện này.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “Surveying the area, palaeoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted a small piece of bone. Straight away, he recognised it as coming from the elbow of a human ancestor.” (Đoạn 1)
Simplified: Donald Johanson recognised it (a small piece of bone) as coming from the elbow of a human ancestor
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Johanson ngay lập tức nhận ra xương khuỷu tay của tổ tiên loài người.
Trong câu hỏi: Johanson không chắc chắn về bản chất của xương khuỷu tay.
⇒ ✅ Chọn: FALSE
-------
Lí do các đáp án còn lại sai:
Nếu là TRUE: bài đọc phải nói rằng Johanson “was uncertain / was not sure” khi nhìn thấy xương. Nhưng thực tế ngược lại, ông chắc chắn ngay.
Nếu là NOT GIVEN: bài đọc phải không hề nhắc tới phản ứng của Johanson khi nhìn thấy xương. Nhưng ở đây đã nói rõ “Straight away, he recognised…”.
A. With its faded gold exterior, looped bell and distinctive soulful sound, the saxophone is one of the most instantly recognisable instruments. Although now most famous for its key role in the development of jazz music, it would be a mistake to believe it has always been this way. Its story is quite unlike that of the equally prominent jazz trio - trombone, clarinet and trumpet - which first appeared in the French military band of the late Middle Ages. In fact it was not until the early 19th Century that the saxophone first appeared on the world stage, thanks to a young Belgian of profound musical ability who had inherited his father's gift for instrument invention.
B
Born in Wallonia in 1814, Adolphe Sax grew up in an environment which struck a perfect harmony of invention and musicality. His father was a keen designer of instruments who made notable improvements to the design of the horn and Adolphe had already created several flutes and clarinets from scratch before heading to the Royal Conservatory of Brussels to study woodwind. Following his studies, Sax emerged as a clarinet virtuoso but - much to his master's disappointment – followed in his father's footsteps and proceeded to focus on the improvement of the clarinet. In 1842, he opened a workshop in Paris - then the artistic capital of Europe - where he set about designing instruments.
C
Sax’s opportunity came in 1859 when official changes were made to concert pitch, meaning it would be necessary for every band and orchestra to acquire new woodwind instruments. Originally, Sax invented two families of saxophone, one for orchestral use, the other for military use. The latter gained more exposure in the musical world following Sax's triumph at a head-to-head competition with the existing French military orchestra as part of a project to revolutionise French military music, at the time considered to be an embarrassment to patriotism and prestige. Subsequently, the saxophone made its journey beyond France's borders, through the military bands of much of the Western world.
D
In North America, the instrument became a key component of the popular wind bands where clarinetists also frequently experimented with the saxophone. One such dual instrumentalist, Edouard Lefebre, had fallen in love with the instrument whilst visiting Paris and pledged to make it his life’s work to promote the instrument. He settled in the United States where he eventually joined the John Philip Sousa Band, which toured throughout the United States playing its patriotic military marches and providing a platform for some of the saxophone's early icons. The instrument's popularity soon soared, allowing saxophonists to achieve unprecedented acclaim and riches. However, the fact that many early saxophonists incorporated novel gimmicks – such as simulated animal sounds and wild comic vibratos – within their 'uncultured' performances meant that its potential was yet to be recognised in more high-brow musical circles.
E
While the saxophone continued to gain approval from the public due to its continued use in music hall and vaudeville shows, early jazz pioneers continued to experiment with more traditional members of the horn and woodwind sections – the clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. In addition to the saxophone's negative associations as a frivolous instrument, another concern at the time was that the sound – smooth and mellow – could not compete with blaring trumpets, noisy drums and loud conversation that accompanied jazz performances. To counter this, the mouthpiece was shortened in order to slightly increase amplitude, making the instrument a suitable mouthpiece for the jazz sound. Through former clarinetists - including Sidney Bechet - who did not like the fact that the clarinet was unable to compete in volume with the brass melody instruments, the soprano saxophone became the first variety of the instrument to make a name for itself within the 1920s New Orleans jazz scene.
F
The saxophone became increasingly important in Swing music in the 1930s, which featured baritone saxophone and brass sections of the band playing call-response patterns between each other. Hugely influential towards the end of the 1930s was the work of Coleman Hawkins whose arrival onto the scene marked the point at which the saxophone grew to be an equal of the trumpet within the jazz sound. This momentum grew exponentially through the 1940s Bop and 1950s Bebop periods, which employed the saxophone expertly for solos and improvisations. Charlie Parker – now considered one of jazz's most important pioneers and talented virtuosos – was one of the key exponents of this new style of saxophone-focused jazz.
G
The saxophone has continued to play a prominent role in the development of a variety of types of music up to the present day. Saxophonists such as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman made full use of the instrument's creative potential through the avant-garde jazz movements of the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with tonal exploration, harmonics and multiphonics, and Pharaoh Sanders extended its reach to mimic non-Western ethnic sounds. In addition to the occasional flirtations classical music made with the saxophone in the early 20th Century, the instrument has also featured prominently in modern minimalist music as well as film soundtracks. Pop music has had a love affair with the saxophone from the 1950s doo-wop and rock and roll tracks, through to Motown and progressive rock, and platinum sales of albums by saxophone soloists such as Kenny G suggest that our fascination with the instrument remains in full swing.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
15
VII
Giải thích chi tiết
Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Headings
✅ Paragraph B → Đáp án đúng:F. A child of science and sound
Step 01: Read to understand main idea
Dựa vào phần Simplify & Connection ở trên, ta có thể rút ra main idea như sau:
Adolphe Sax được sinh ra trong một môi trường kết hợp hoàn hảo giữa khoa học chế tạo và âm nhạc biểu diễn.
Tài năng của ông trải dài từ kỹ năng biểu diễn clarinet đến khả năng cải tiến và sáng chế nhạc cụ.
-------
Step 02: Compare meaning with meaning
Đại ý của đoạn:
Đoạn B tập trung mô tả nguồn gốc và môi trường nuôi dưỡng của Adolphe Sax – sự kết hợp giữa nền tảng khoa học chế tạo nhạc cụ từ cha ông và khả năng âm nhạc thiên bẩm của bản thân.
Nicholas Wade examines leaf-cutter ants and their amazing agriculture.
A
A. Leaf-cutting ants and their fungus (fungus an organism such as a mushroom which obtains its food from decaying material) ‘farm’ are a marvel of nature and perhaps the best-known example of symbiosis - the mutual dependence of two species. The ants cultivate a mushroom – like fungus in ‘farms’. Both the ants and their so-called ‘agriculture have been extensively studied over the years, but recent research has uncovered intriguing new findings. Ants invented agriculture 50 million years before people did, and leaf-cutters, members of the large attine ant family, practice the most sophisticated example of it. They grow their fungus in underground chambers that can reach the size of a football. A single leaf-cutter nest may contain a thousand such chambers, embedded in an underground metropolis up to 18 feet deep, and support a society of more than a million ants.
B
These ant communities are the dominant plant-eaters of the Neotropics, the region comprising South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Biologists believe 15 percent of the leaf production of tropical forests disappears down the nests of leaf-cutter ants. In the nest, the leaves are shredded and added to the fungus, which digests the leaves and is in turn eaten by the ants. The attine ants' achievement is remarkable because it allows them to consume, courtesy of their mushroom’s digestive powers, the harvest of tropical forests whose leaves are laden with poisonous chemicals.
C
There are more than 200 known species of the attine ant tribe, divided into 12 groups, or genera. The leaf-cutters use fresh vegetation; the other groups, known as the lower attines because their nests are smaller and their techniques more primitive, feed their gardens with similar leaves which have fallen on the ground and insects that lie on the forest floor. Lower attine ants are all a similar size. However, leaf-cutter worker ants come in made-to-fit sizes – large ants to saw off leaves, medium ones to shred them, and miniature workers to seed them with fungus and clean off alien growths.
D
In 1994, biologists from the United States Department of Agriculture analyzed the DNA of ant funguses. They found the leaf-cutters' fungus was descended from a single pure strain, propagated for at least 23 million years. However, the funguses grown by lower attine ants fell into four different groups, as if the ants had domesticated wild funguses at least four times in evolutionary history. What could be driving these two patterns of fungus gardening, the pure clone cultivation of the leaf-cutters and multiple varieties of the lower attines?
E
The answer has been suggested by Cameron Currie of University of Toronto, it. The pure strain of fungus grown by the leaf-cutters, it seemed to him, resembled the single crops grown by humans to the exclusion of all others, such as potato growing. These ‘monocultures’, which lack the genetic diversity to respond to changing environmental threats, are particularly vulnerable to parasites – organisms which live and feed on their host, often causing harm. Currie felt there had to be a parasite in the ant-fungus system. But a century of ant research did not provide any evidence for his idea. Textbooks describe how leaf-cutter ants scrupulously weed their gardens of all foreign organisms. "People kept telling me, the ants keep their gardens free of parasites," said Currie. Nevertheless, after three years of sifting through attine ant gardens, Currie discovered several alien organisms, particularly a family of parasitic molds called ‘Escovopsis’.
F
Escovopsis is a deadly disease that can devastate a fungus garden in a couple of days. It blooms like a white cloud which envelops the whole garden. Other ants won’t go near it and the ants associated with the garden just starve to death. Evidently, the ants usually manage to keep Escovopsis and other parasites under control. Nevertheless, with any lapse in control Escovopsis will quickly burst forth. Although new leaf-cutter gardens start off free of Escovopsis, within two years some 60 percent become infected.
G
The discovery of Escovopsis’s role brings a new level of understanding to the evolution of the attine ants. In the last decade, evolutionary biologists have been increasingly aware of the role of parasites as driving forces in evolution. With Currie’s work, there is now a possible reason for the different varieties of fungus in the lower attine mushroom gardens- to stay one step ahead of the relentless Escovopsis. Interestingly, the leaf-cutters had in general fewer alien molds in their gardens than the lower attines, yet more Escovopsis infections. Clearly, the price they pay for cultivating a pure variety of fungus is a higher risk from Escovopsis.
H
So how do attine ants keep this parasite under control? People have known for a hundred years that ants have a whitish growth on their body surface. It was thought to be wax but, after examining it under a microscope, Currie discovered a specialized patch on the ants' bodies that harbors a particular kind of bacterium, one well known to the pharmaceutical industry and the source of half the antibiotics used in medicine. This bacterium is a potent poisoner of Escovopsis inhibiting its growth and suppressing spore formation. Astoundingly, the leaf-cutter ants are accomplishing feats beyond the power of humans: they are growing a monocultural crop year after year without disaster, and they are using an antibiotic apparently so wisely that, unlike people, they are not provoking antibiotic resistance in the target disease-producing organism.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
28
H
Giải thích chi tiết
Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Information
📌 Dạng Matching Information chúng ta nên làm cuối cùng, sau khi đã làm các dạng câu hỏi khác nhé DOLBIES, bởi vì lúc này mình đã đọc và hiểu nội dung của bài rồi → sẽ nhanh chóng tìm được vị trí đáp án hơn!!
-------
Step 1: Phân tích câu hỏi (Matching Information) Two things at which leaf-cutter ants have succeeded but humans have failed .
Dự đoán thông tin cần tìm (SPECIFY): đoạn đúng phải có đủ 2 mảnh rõ ràng:
Hai thành tựu cụ thể của leaf-cutter ants (thường sẽ là 2 hành động/2 “feats”, có thể nối bằng and).
Có so sánh/đối chiếu với humans (ví dụ: “unlike people”, “beyond humans”, “humans can’t”, “beyond the power of humans”…).
-------
Step 2: Locate bằng chứng
Đoạn H (câu cuối) có đúng format “two things” + đối chiếu humans:
Astoundingly, the leaf-cutter ants are accomplishing feats beyond the power of humans : they are growing a monocultural crop year after year without disaster , and they are using an antibiotic (...) so wisely that (...) they are not provoking antibiotic resistance .
-------
Step 3: Đối chiếu paraphrasing (chốt match đúng)
Two things ⇔ trong đoạn H có 2 “feats” được liệt kê sau dấu “:” và nối bằng and.
leaf-cutter ants have succeeded ⇔ “the leaf-cutter ants are accomplishing feats …” + “they are growing…” + “they are using…” (hai hành động cụ thể).
but humans have failed ⇔ “beyond the power of humans” + “unlike people” (nói rõ con người không làm được / làm kém hơn).
→ Vì câu ở đoạn H vừa có 2 việc cụ thể, vừa có đối chiếu trực tiếp với humans, nên match chuẩn yêu cầu câu hỏi.
=> Match PARAGRAPH H.
❌ Bẫy hay dính khi skim/scan
Dễ chọn đoạn E/F/G vì thấy nhiều từ khoá về “parasites / disease / antibiotics” hoặc “Escovopsis”, tưởng là nói “con người thất bại”. Nhưng các đoạn đó chủ yếu giải thích ký sinh, nguyên nhân tiến hoá, mức độ nhiễm, chứ không nêu rõ 2 thành tựu + đối chiếu humans fail như đoạn H.
On a Sunday morning, in late November 1974, a team of scientists were digging in an isolated spot in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Surveying the area, palaeoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted a small piece of bone. Straight away, he recognised it as coming from the elbow of a human ancestor. And there were plenty more. 'As I looked up the slopes to my left, I saw bits of the skull, a chunk of jaw, a couple of vertebrae,' says Johanson.
It was immediately obvious that the skeleton was a significant find, because the sediments at the site were known to be 3.5 million years old. 'I realised this was part of a skeleton that was older than three million years,' says Johanson. It was the most ancient early human ever found. Later it became apparent that it was also the most complete - 40% of the skeleton had been preserved.
At the group's campsite that night, Johanson played a Beatles song called 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds', and, as the feeling was that the skeleton was female due to its size, someone suggested calling it Lucy. The name stuck and Johanson says, 'All of a sudden, she became a person.' But the morning after the discovery, the discussion was dominated by questions. How old was Lucy when she died? Did she have children? And might she be our direct ancestor? Nowadays, we're starting to get the answers to some of these questions.
According to Johanson, Lucy had an incredible combination of primitive and derived features, which had not been seen before. Her skull and jaws were more ape-like than those of other groups of early humans. Her braincase was also very small, no bigger than that of a chimp. She had a hefty jaw, a low forehead and long dangly arms.
For Johanson, it was immediately apparent that Lucy walked upright. That's because the shape and positioning of her pelvis reflected a fully upright gait. Lucy's knee and ankle also preserved and seemed to reflect bipedal walking. Later studies of feet offer even more evidence. As an upright walker, Lucy strengthened the idea that walking was one of the selective pressures driving human evolution forwards. Early humans did not need bigger brains to take defining steps away from apes. Extra brainpower only came over a million years later with the arrival of the species Homo erectus, meaning upright man. Though big brains would clearly be important later, walking remains one of the traits that makes us uniquely human.
She may have walked like a human, but Lucy spent at least some of her time up in the trees as chimpanzees and orangutans still do today. It may be that upright walking evolved in the trees, as a way to walk along branches that would otherwise be too flexible. It's not clear why Lucy left the safety of the trees. It is thought that savannahs were gradually opening up, so trees were spaced further apart. But hunting for food may have been the real reason for heading to the ground, says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. In line with this idea, recent evidence suggests that the diet of early humans was changing at that time.
Studies of the remains of food trapped on preserved human teeth indicate that several species, including Lucy's, were expanding their diet around 3.5 million years ago. Instead of mostly eating fruit from trees, they began to include grasses and possibly meat. This change in diet may have allowed them to range more widely, and to travel around more efficiently in a changing environment. Fossilised crocodile and turtle eggs were found near her skeleton, suggesting that Lucy died while foraging for them in a nearby lake.
How did early humans process all these new foods? Later species, like Homo erectus, are known to have used simple stone tools, but no tools have ever been found from this far back. However, in 2010 archaeologists uncovered animal bones with scratches that seem to have been made by stone tools. This suggests that Lucy and her relatives used stone tools to eat meat. There have since been heated debates over whether or not the marks were really made by tools. But if they were, it is not surprising, says Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
It also seems that Lucy's childhood was much briefer than ours and that she had to fend for herself from a young age. We know that Lucy was a full-grown adult because she had wisdom teeth and her bones had fused. But unlike modern humans, she seems to have grown to full size very quickly, and time of death was when she was around 12 years old. In line with that, a recent study of a 3-year-old early human suggested that their brains matured much earlier than ours do.
B. Born in Wallonia in 1814, Adolphe Sax grew up in an environment which struck a perfect harmony of invention and musicality. His father was a keen designer of instruments who made notable improvements to the design of the horn and Adolphe had already created several flutes and clarinets from scratch before heading to the Royal Conservatory of Brussels to study woodwind. Following his studies, Sax emerged as a clarinet virtuoso but - much to his master's disappointment – followed in his father's footsteps and proceeded to focus on the improvement of the clarinet. In 1842, he opened a workshop in Paris - then the artistic capital of Europe - where he set about designing instruments.
C. Sax’s opportunity came in 1859 when official changes were made to concert pitch, meaning it would be necessary for every band and orchestra to acquire new woodwind instruments. Originally, Sax invented two families of saxophone, one for orchestral use, the other for military use. The latter gained more exposure in the musical world following Sax's triumph at a head-to-head competition with the existing French military orchestra as part of a project to revolutionise French military music, at the time considered to be an embarrassment to patriotism and prestige. Subsequently, the saxophone made its journey beyond France's borders, through the military bands of much of the Western world.
D. In North America, the instrument became a key component of the popular wind bands where clarinetists also frequently experimented with the saxophone. One such dual instrumentalist, Edouard Lefebre, had fallen in love with the instrument whilst visiting Paris and pledged to make it his life’s work to promote the instrument. He settled in the United States where he eventually joined the John Philip Sousa Band, which toured throughout the United States playing its patriotic military marches and providing a platform for some of the saxophone's early icons. The instrument's popularity soon soared, allowing saxophonists to achieve unprecedented acclaim and riches. However, the fact that many early saxophonists incorporated novel gimmicks – such as simulated animal sounds and wild comic vibratos – within their 'uncultured' performances meant that its potential was yet to be recognised in more high-brow musical circles.
E. While the saxophone continued to gain approval from the public due to its continued use in music hall and vaudeville shows, early jazz pioneers continued to experiment with more traditional members of the horn and woodwind sections – the clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. In addition to the saxophone's negative associations as a frivolous instrument, another concern at the time was that the sound – smooth and mellow – could not compete with blaring trumpets, noisy drums and loud conversation that accompanied jazz performances. To counter this, the mouthpiece was shortened in order to slightly increase amplitude, making the instrument a suitable mouthpiece for the jazz sound. Through former clarinetists - including Sidney Bechet - who did not like the fact that the clarinet was unable to compete in volume with the brass melody instruments, the soprano saxophone became the first variety of the instrument to make a name for itself within the 1920s New Orleans jazz scene.
F. The saxophone became increasingly important in Swing music in the 1930s, which featured baritone saxophone and brass sections of the band playing call-response patterns between each other. Hugely influential towards the end of the 1930s was the work of Coleman Hawkins whose arrival onto the scene marked the point at which the saxophone grew to be an equal of the trumpet within the jazz sound. This momentum grew exponentially through the 1940s Bop and 1950s Bebop periods, which employed the saxophone expertly for solos and improvisations. Charlie Parker – now considered one of jazz's most important pioneers and talented virtuosos – was one of the key exponents of this new style of saxophone-focused jazz.
G. The saxophone has continued to play a prominent role in the development of a variety of types of music up to the present day. Saxophonists such as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman made full use of the instrument's creative potential through the avant-garde jazz movements of the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with tonal exploration, harmonics and multiphonics, and Pharaoh Sanders extended its reach to mimic non-Western ethnic sounds. In addition to the occasional flirtations classical music made with the saxophone in the early 20th Century, the instrument has also featured prominently in modern minimalist music as well as film soundtracks. Pop music has had a love affair with the saxophone from the 1950s doo-wop and rock and roll tracks, through to Motown and progressive rock, and platinum sales of albums by saxophone soloists such as Kenny G suggest that our fascination with the instrument remains in full swing.
B. These ant communities are the dominant plant-eaters of the Neotropics, the region comprising South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Biologists believe 15 percent of the leaf production of tropical forests disappears down the nests of leaf-cutter ants. In the nest, the leaves are shredded and added to the fungus, which digests the leaves and is in turn eaten by the ants. The attine ants' achievement is remarkable because it allows them to consume, courtesy of their mushroom’s digestive powers, the harvest of tropical forests whose leaves are laden with poisonous chemicals.
C. There are more than 200 known species of the attine ant tribe, divided into 12 groups, or genera. The leaf-cutters use fresh vegetation; the other groups, known as the lower attines because their nests are smaller and their techniques more primitive, feed their gardens with similar leaves which have fallen on the ground and insects that lie on the forest floor. Lower attine ants are all a similar size. However, leaf-cutter worker ants come in made-to-fit sizes – large ants to saw off leaves, medium ones to shred them, and miniature workers to seed them with fungus and clean off alien growths.
D. In 1994, biologists from the United States Department of Agriculture analyzed the DNA of ant funguses. They found the leaf-cutters' fungus was descended from a single pure strain, propagated for at least 23 million years. However, the funguses grown by lower attine ants fell into four different groups, as if the ants had domesticated wild funguses at least four times in evolutionary history. What could be driving these two patterns of fungus gardening, the pure clone cultivation of the leaf-cutters and multiple varieties of the lower attines?
E. The answer has been suggested by Cameron Currie of University of Toronto, it. The pure strain of fungus grown by the leaf-cutters, it seemed to him, resembled the single crops grown by humans to the exclusion of all others, such as potato growing. These ‘monocultures’, which lack the genetic diversity to respond to changing environmental threats, are particularly vulnerable to parasites – organisms which live and feed on their host, often causing harm. Currie felt there had to be a parasite in the ant-fungus system. But a century of ant research did not provide any evidence for his idea. Textbooks describe how leaf-cutter ants scrupulously weed their gardens of all foreign organisms. "People kept telling me, the ants keep their gardens free of parasites," said Currie. Nevertheless, after three years of sifting through attine ant gardens, Currie discovered several alien organisms, particularly a family of parasitic molds called ‘Escovopsis’.
F. Escovopsis is a deadly disease that can devastate a fungus garden in a couple of days. It blooms like a white cloud which envelops the whole garden. Other ants won’t go near it and the ants associated with the garden just starve to death. Evidently, the ants usually manage to keep Escovopsis and other parasites under control. Nevertheless, with any lapse in control Escovopsis will quickly burst forth. Although new leaf-cutter gardens start off free of Escovopsis, within two years some 60 percent become infected.
G. The discovery of Escovopsis’s role brings a new level of understanding to the evolution of the attine ants. In the last decade, evolutionary biologists have been increasingly aware of the role of parasites as driving forces in evolution. With Currie’s work, there is now a possible reason for the different varieties of fungus in the lower attine mushroom gardens- to stay one step ahead of the relentless Escovopsis. Interestingly, the leaf-cutters had in general fewer alien molds in their gardens than the lower attines, yet more Escovopsis infections. Clearly, the price they pay for cultivating a pure variety of fungus is a higher risk from Escovopsis.
H. So how do attine ants keep this parasite under control? People have known for a hundred years that ants have a whitish growth on their body surface. It was thought to be wax but, after examining it under a microscope, Currie discovered a specialized patch on the ants' bodies that harbors a particular kind of bacterium, one well known to the pharmaceutical industry and the source of half the antibiotics used in medicine. This bacterium is a potent poisoner of Escovopsis inhibiting its growth and suppressing spore formation. Astoundingly, the leaf-cutter ants are accomplishing feats beyond the power of humans: they are growing a monocultural crop year after year without disaster, and they are using an antibiotic apparently so wisely that, unlike people, they are not provoking antibiotic resistance in the target disease-producing organism.
are accomplishing feats beyond the power of humans
they are growing a monocultural crop year after year without disaster
and
they are using an antibiotic (...) so wisely that (...) they are not provoking antibiotic resistance
