造礁珊瑚顯示出與上次大滅絕事件相似的“災(zāi)難特征”

造礁珊瑚顯示出與上次大滅絕事件相似的“災(zāi)難特征”

Stony corals — which help to shelter a large number of ocean-dwelling species — are preparing for a major extinction event, a new study reveals.

一項(xiàng)新的研究顯示，作為眾多海洋生物的避難所的石珊瑚，正準(zhǔn)備應(yīng)對(duì)一場(chǎng)重大的滅絕事件。

The researchers, who published their study Tuesday in Scientific Reports, discovered that corals are exhibiting a number of survival responses that appear to mirror their last big extinction some 66 million years ago.

研究人員周二在《科學(xué)報(bào)告》(Scientific Reports)雜志上發(fā)表了他們的研究結(jié)果。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，珊瑚正在表現(xiàn)出一系列的生存反應(yīng)，這些反應(yīng)似乎反映了它們?cè)诖蠹s6600萬(wàn)年前最后一次的大滅絕。

Those coral traits include a higher frequency of deep-water residing, solitary or tiny colonies, bleaching resistance and others.

珊瑚的這些特征包括更高頻率的深水居住，獨(dú)居或小群體，抗漂白和其他。

“It was incredibly spooky to witness how corals are now exhibiting the same traits as they did at the last major extinction event,” said David Gruber, a researcher and marine biologist with the Graduate Center, CUNY and Baruch College, in a statement. “Corals seem to be preparing to jump across an extinction boundary, while we are putting our foot further on the pedal.”

紐約市立大學(xué)和巴魯克學(xué)院研究生中心的研究員、海洋生物學(xué)家大衛(wèi)·格魯伯在一份聲明中說(shuō):“看到珊瑚現(xiàn)在表現(xiàn)出與上一次大滅絕事件相同的特征，真是令人毛骨悚然。”“珊瑚似乎正準(zhǔn)備跨越滅絕的界限，而我們正進(jìn)一步加大力度。”

The team, which includes an international group of scientists, analyzed 250 million years of fossil coral data from the Paleobiology Database and then compared this to modern data.

這個(gè)由國(guó)際科學(xué)家組成的團(tuán)隊(duì)分析了來(lái)自古生物學(xué)數(shù)據(jù)庫(kù)的2.5億年的珊瑚化石數(shù)據(jù)，并將其與現(xiàn)代數(shù)據(jù)進(jìn)行了比較。

“This study reminds us that corals are diverse and flexible organisms with a demonstrated success facing the most extreme environmental crisis in Earth’s history: mass extinction,” said the study’s first author Gal Dishon, a marine biologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California.

加利福尼亞大學(xué)斯克里普斯海洋研究所的海洋生物學(xué)家蓋爾·迪松是這項(xiàng)研究的第一作者，他說(shuō):“這項(xiàng)研究提醒我們，珊瑚是多種多樣、靈活多變的生物，它們成功地應(yīng)對(duì)了地球歷史上最嚴(yán)重的環(huán)境危機(jī):大滅絕。”

“Nevertheless, based on the lessons we learned from fossil data, the surviving corals will not be those reef builders we know from hyper-diverse tropical coral reefs, but rather small, solitary, slow-growing and deep-dwelling corals,” Dishon explained.

迪松解釋說(shuō):“然而，根據(jù)我們從化石數(shù)據(jù)中得到的教訓(xùn)，幸存的珊瑚不會(huì)是那些我們從高度多樣化的熱帶珊瑚礁中了解到的珊瑚礁建造者，而是小型的、獨(dú)居的、生長(zhǎng)緩慢的和深居的珊瑚。”

“There is something very powerful about this message coming from the corals,” said Gruber. “Corals are such a sensitive group of marine creatures, they are essentially the canary in the coal mine.”

格魯伯說(shuō):“珊瑚發(fā)出的信息非常有力。珊瑚是一群非常敏感的海洋生物，它們本質(zhì)上是煤礦里的金絲雀。”