经济学人2019.5.11/Protecting coral reefs

Protecting coral reefs

保护珊瑚礁

Please do not bleach

请不要回避（白化）

词汇

Bleach/退缩；回避；使变白

这里blench一指不要回避保护珊瑚礁的项目，再用blench指出珊瑚礁面临的白化现象，希望能够控制住。

An idea to save coral reefs from climate change takes a step forward

将珊瑚礁从气候变化中拯救出来的想法向前迈出了一步

Bleaching is bad for coral. It happens when heat-stressed polyps, the sessile animals that construct coral reefs, eject the photosynthetic algae which usually reside within them. These algae are symbionts, providing nutrients to their hosts in return for shelter, so losing them is harmful to polyps and often results in their death. The higher temperatures brought about by global warming have therefore led to worries that more frequent episodes of bleaching might result in the loss of entire reefs.

珊瑚白化对珊瑚有害。这发生于热应激性的珊瑚虫——一种建造珊瑚的无柄动物，驱逐通常寄生在他们身上的，靠光合作用自给的藻类的情况下。这些藻类是共生体，为宿主提供营养以换取庇护，因此失去它们对珊瑚虫是有害的，往往会导致它们的死亡。因此，全球变暖带来的更高温度引发了人们的担忧，即更频繁的白化现象可能导致整个珊瑚礁的消失。

词汇

Polyp/珊瑚虫

Sessile/无柄的

Photosynthetic/  [生化] 光合的；光合作用的

Algae/ [植] 藻类；[植] 海藻

Symbionts/ [生态] 共生者；共生有机体

Some of these symbiotic arrangements between alga and animal are, however, more heat-sensitive than others. It might therefore be possible to save reefs by seeding them with heat-resistant symbioses. As temperatures rose, these biological partnerships would spread and the reef they had been transplanted to would survive. Two researchers studying this idea are Megan Morikawa and Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University, in California. And they have just published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which suggests that it might work.

然而，藻类和动物之间的一些共生组合比其他的生物更热敏感。因此，通过在珊瑚礁上播下耐热共生植物来拯救它们是可行的。随着温度的升高，这些共生组合将会散播开来，它们被移植到的珊瑚礁也会存活下来。加州斯坦福大学的Megan Morikawa和Stephen Palumbi是研究这一观点的两名研究人员。他们刚刚在《美国国家科学院院刊》上发表了一篇论文，表明这种方法可能有效。

词汇

Reef/暗礁；[地质] 矿脉；收帆

Dr Morikawa and Dr Palumbi started by collecting 20 representatives of each of four types of coral from a lagoon off the coast of American Samoa. They picked the lagoon in question because it was small and shallow, and thus had limited water circulation. This meant it often experienced temperature spikes, so any corals living within it would be expected to be adapted to endure such spikes. Laboratory tests proved those expectations correct.

Morikawa博士和Palumbi博士首先从美属萨摩亚海岸的一个环礁湖收集了四种珊瑚中每一种的20个代表样本。他们为了猜想选定这个环礁湖是因为它又小又浅，因此水循环有限。这意味着它经常经历温度顶峰，所以生活在其中的任何珊瑚都有可能适应这种顶峰。实验室测试证明这些预期是正确的。

词汇

Lagoon/环礁湖；咸水湖

The researchers then picked a second reef, 3km from the original lagoon, which had similar mean temperatures over the year but experienced lower daily temperature fluctuations. They seeded this with 400 fragments derived from their collected samples and a further 400 that were not heat-resistant, to act as controls. The original plan had been to let these transplanted corals grow for a while in their new environment and then bring them back to base for testing. Nature, however, intervened. Eight months after the seeding, soaring temperatures caused extensive bleaching on the reef.

然后，研究人员在距原始环礁湖3公里的地方选择了第二个暗礁，那里一年的平均温度相似，但每天的温度波动较低。他们将从采集的样本中提取的400个片段植入湖内，同时，作为对照另外400个不耐热的片段也植入其中。最初的计划是让这些移植的珊瑚在新环境中生长一段时间，然后把它们带回基地进行测试。然而自然环境在干预实验。播种八个月后，不断飙升的气温导致珊瑚礁大面积白化。

Their hands thus forced, Dr Morikawa and Dr Palumbi put on their scuba gear and went diving to see how their transplants had fared. They found that those from resistant colonies were between a half and a third as likely to have become bleached as were the controls. Moreover, when they returned to the parent corals in the shallow lagoon and looked at the health of these after the bleaching event, they found that the experience of the parents tended to match that of their offspring. The eight months of acclimatisation and growth the transplants had undergone had not, in other words, eliminated the heat tolerance they inherited from their parent colonies.

森川博士和帕鲁比博士的手工作业暂告一段落，他们佩戴上潜水器，去潜水，看看他们的移植方案进展如何。他们发现，与对照组相比，来自耐热性的珊瑚礁种群有一半到三分之一的可能会变白。此外，当他们回到浅环礁湖的珊瑚母体中，观察漂白事件后这些珊瑚的健康状况时，他们发现，父母的经历往往与子女的经历相配。换句话说，移植物经过八个月的适应和生长，并没有消除它们从母株那里遗传来的耐热性。

词汇

scuba gear/水中呼吸装置

colony/种群

acclimatization/适应性；服水土

Though eight months is not that long, this result is encouraging. Dr Morikawa and Dr Palumbi now plan an extended study in Palau. If that proves successful, then the idea of saving reefs by seeding them with heat-resistant strains will have received a significant boost.

虽然8个月并不长，但这一结果令人鼓舞。森川博士和帕隆比博士现在计划在帕劳进行一项长期研究。如果这被证明是成功的，那么通过在珊瑚礁上播种耐热菌株来拯救它们的想法将会得到极大的推动。