Ichthyology, the study of fishes. It looks like a big, boring word, but it's actually quite exciting, because ichthyology is the only "ology" with "YOLO" in it.
Ihtiologija, veda o ribah. Izgleda kot velika, dolgočasna beseda, a je pravzaprav precej vznemirljiva, ker je ihtiologija edina "ologija", ki ima v sebi YOLO.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Now, to the cool kids in the audience, you already know, YOLO stands for "you only live once," and because I only have one life, I'm going to spend it doing what I always dreamt of doing: seeing the hidden wonders of the world and discovering new species. And that's what I get to do.
Tisti v občinstvu, ki ste kul, že veste, da YOLO pomeni "samo enkrat se živi" ("you only live once") in ker imam samo eno življenje, bom počel nekaj, o čemer sem vedno sanjal: da bi videl skrita čudesa sveta in odkrival nove vrste. In to tudi počnem.
Now, in recent years, I really focused on caves for finding new species. And it turns out, there's lots of new cavefish species out there. You just have to know where to look, and to maybe be a little thin.
V zadnjih letih sem se osredotočil na jame, da bi našel nove vrste. In izkaže se, da je tam veliko novih vrst jamskih rib. Samo vedeti moraš, kje iskati in biti morda malo suh.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Now, cavefishes can tell me a lot about biology and geology. They can tell me how the landmasses around them have changed and moved by being stuck in these little holes, and they can tell me about the evolution of sight, by being blind.
Jamske ribe mi lahko veliko povedo o biologiji in geologiji. Lahko mi povedo, kako so se zemeljske mase okrog njih spreminjale in premikale, ker so obtičale v teh malih luknjah, in lahko mi nekaj povedo o evoluciji vida, ker so slepe.
Now, fish have eyes that are essentially the same as ours. All vertebrates do, and each time a fish species starts to adapt to this dark, cold, cave environment, over many, many generations, they lose their eyes and their eyesight until the end up like an eyeless cavefish like this one here. Now, each cavefish species has evolved in a slightly different way, and each one has a unique geological and biological story to tell us, and that's why it's so exciting when we find a new species.
Ribe imajo oči, ki so pravzaprav enake našim. Vsi vretenčarji jih imajo in vsakič, ko se vrsta ribe začne prilagajati na temno, mrzlo jamsko okolje, čez mnogo, mnogo generacij, izgubijo oči in vid, dokler ne končajo kot tale brezoka riba tule. Vsaka vrsta jamske ribe se je razvila na rahlo drugačen način in vsaka nam lahko pove drugačno ekološko in geološko zgodbo in zato je tako vznemirljivo, ko najdemo nove vrste.
So this is a new species we described, from southern Indiana. We named it Amblyopsis hoosieri, the Hoosier cavefish.
Nova vrsta, ki smo jo opisali, je iz južne Indiane. Poimenovali smo jo Amblyopsis hoosieri, Hoosier jamska riba.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
Its closest relatives are cavefishes in Kentucky, in the Mammoth Cave system. And they start to diverge when the Ohio River split them a few million years ago. And in that time they developed these subtle differences in the genetic architecture behind their blindness. There's this gene called rhodopsin that's super-critical for sight. We have it, and these species have it too, except one species has lost all function in that gene, and the other one maintains it. So this sets up this beautiful natural experiment where we can look at the genes behind our vision, and at the very roots of how we can see.
Njeni najbližji sorodniki so jamske ribe iz Kentuckyja, v Mamutovi jami. In začeli sta se razlikovati, ko ju je reka Ohio razdelila pred nekaj milijoni let. V tem času so se razvile te subtilne razlike in genetska arhitektura za njuno slepoto. Gen, imenovan rodopsin, je zelo pomemben za vid. Mi ga imamo in vse te vrste tudi, razen ene, ki je izgubila vso funkcijo tega gena, in druge, ki jo je ohranila. Tako to nastavi čudovit naravni eksperiment, kjer lahko pogledamo gene, odgovorne za naš vid, in korenine izvora našega vida.
But the genes in these cavefishes can also tell us about deep geological time, maybe no more so than in this species here. This is a new species we described from Madagascar that we named Typhleotris mararybe. That means "big sickness" in Malagasy, for how sick we got trying to collect this species. Now, believe it or not, swimming around sinkholes full of dead things and cave full of bat poop isn't the smartest thing you could be doing with your life, but YOLO.
A geni v teh jamskih ribah nam lahko povedo tudi nekaj o geoloških dobah in nobena tako kot tale vrsta tu. To je nova vrsta, ki smo jo opisali v Madagaskarju in jo poimenovali Typhleotris mararybe. V malgaškem jeziku to pomeni "velika bolezen", ker smo skoraj zboleli med iskanjem te vrste. Verjemite ali ne, plavanje v luknjah polnih mrtvih stvari in jami polni iztrebkov netopirjev ni najpametnejša stvar, ki jo narediš s svojim življenjem, ampak YOLO.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Now, I love this species despite the fact that it tried to kill us, and that's because this species in Madagascar, its closest relatives are 6,000 kilometers away, cavefishes in Australia. Now, there's no way a three-inch-long freshwater cavefish can swim across the Indian Ocean, so what we found when we compared the DNA of these species is that they've been separated for more than 100 million years, or about the time that the southern continents were last together. So in fact, these species didn't move at all. It's the continents that moved them. And so they give us, through their DNA, this precise model and measure of how to date and time these ancient geological events.
Rad imam to vrsto kljub temu, da nas je poskušala ubiti, zato ker so najbližji sorodniki te vrste iz Madagaskarja 6.000 kilometrov oddaljene jamske ribe iz Avstralije. Ni možno, da bi 7,5 centimetrska sladkovodna jamska ribica preplavala Indijski ocean, in ko smo primerjali DNK teh dveh vrst, smo ugotovili, da sta bili ločeni več kot 100 milijonov let, oziroma od takrat, ko so se južni kontinenti nazadnje stikali. Torej se ti dve vrsti sploh nista premaknili. Kontinenti so ju premaknili. Tako nam skozi svojo DNK dajo natančni model in mere, kako določiti čas geoloških dogodkov.
Now, this species here is so new I'm not even allowed to tell you its name yet, but I can tell you it's a new species from Mexico, and it's probably already extinct. It's probably extinct because the only known cave system it's from was destroyed when a dam was built nearby. Unfortunately for cavefishes, their groundwater habitat is also our main source of drinking water.
Ta vrsta tu je tako nova, da vam ne smem še povedati njenega imena, lahko pa vam povem, da je to nova vrsta iz Mehike in je najbrž že izumrla. Najbrž je izumrla, ker se je edini jamski sistem, kjer živi, uničil, ko so v bližini zgradili jez. Na njihovo smolo, je podvodno okolje jamskih rib prav tako glavni vir naše pitne vode.
Now, we actually don't know this species' closest relative, yet. It doesn't appear to be anything else in Mexico, so maybe it's something in Cuba, or Florida, or India. But whatever it is, it might tell us something new about the geology of the Caribbean, or the biology of how to better diagnose certain types of blindness. But I hope we discover this species before it goes extinct too.
Sedaj še ne poznamo najbližjega sorodnika te vrste. Zdi se, da ni ničesar v Mehiki, tako da je najbrž nekje na Kubi ali na Floridi ali v Indiji. A karkoli je, nam bo morda povedalo nekaj novega o geologiji Karibov, ali o biologiji tega, kako bolje diagnosticirati določene vrste slepote. A upam, da odkrijemo to vrsto, preden še ta izumre.
And I'm going to spend my one life as an ichthyologist trying to discover and save these humble little blind cavefishes that can tell us so much about the geology of the planet and the biology of how we see.
In svoje življenje bom preživel kot ihtiolog, poskušal bom odkriti in rešiti te skromne male jamske ribe, ki nam lahko toliko povejo o geologiji planeta in biologiji našega vida.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)