托福口语 Task 4

Today, we're going to talk about a fascinating behavior in the animal kingdom called 'resource partitioning.' This is when different species that share the same habitat reduce competition by using resources in slightly different ways. It allows them to coexist without one driving the other to extinction. Let me give you two classic examples. First, consider hawks and owls in a forest. Both hunt small rodents, but hawks hunt during the day, while owls hunt at night. This temporal difference—day versus night—means they rarely compete for the same prey at the same time. Second, think about two species of warblers, the Cape May warbler and the Bay-breasted warbler, which both feed on insects in spruce trees. Instead of hunting at different times, they feed in different parts of the same tree. The Cape May warbler feeds near the top, while the Bay-breasted warbler feeds lower down. This spatial separation ensures they don't exhaust the insect supply in one area. So, resource partitioning is a key mechanism for biodiversity.