Direction: Read the given passage and choose the correct answers for the questions given below.
A region in Australia’s southeast was cloaked in sheets of web after floodwaters forced thousands of spiders to find higher ground. Residents in Victoria’s Gippsland region witnessed the ________ 1 ________ after intense rain and heavy flooding rocked the area last week, damaging dozens of homes and leaving two people dead.The waterlogged soil sent thousands, possibly millions of spiders ________ 2 ________ for refuge on plants, signs and anything else above ground.
“We are constantly surrounded by spiders, but we don’t usually see them. They are hiding in the leaf litter and in the soil,” Lizzy Lowe, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University, wrote in an explainer about the phenomenon. “When these flood events happen, they need to ________ 3 ________ quickly up out of holes they live in underground. They come out en masse and use their silk to help them do that.” Baby spiders use the same technique of letting out strands of their silk, known as ballooning, to catch the wind and disperse after emerging from egg sacs. Simultaneous ballooning by thousands of spiders results in the blanket silk effect, called gossamer.
Ken Walker, a senior curator of entomology at the Melbourne Museum, told the media group ‘The Guardian’ that the gossamer effect ________ 4 ________ semi-regularly in Victoria during the wet season in the winter. “There has been a massive flooding event pretty quickly, so they are using the ballooning not to escape for hundreds of kilometres but to almost throw up a lasso on top of the vegetation. It ________ 5 ________ on to the tops of the vegetation because it is lighter than air, and then they quickly climb up.”
A council member, Carolyn Crossley, shared a video of the effect and asked for support for the Gippsland Emergency Relief Fund, which is providing assistance to areas hit hard by the floods. Locals were advised to leave the spiders alone. The webbing will ________ 6 ________ on its own, and the arachnids will likely soon disperse and head back to their underground homes, Walker said.
Choose the correct word to fill the 4th blank.
Explanation:
- Strives: This means to make great efforts to achieve something. It doesn't fit the context as the passage is describing a natural recurring event.
- Works: This means to function or operate. Again, this doesn't suit the context because the passage describes the natural occurrence of a phenomenon.
- Fastens: This means to attach or secure something. It does not apply here as the passage talks about an event happening, not about something being secured.
- Occurs: This means to happen or take place. It perfectly fits the context, as it talks about the gossamer effect happening regularly during the wet season.
- Retreats: This means to withdraw. It isn't suitable because the sentence describes the occurrence of the gossamer effect, not the act of retreating.
Your interpretation aligns with the passage. "Occurs" is indeed the most fitting word for the context.