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.
鱼类学(Ichthyology) 是研究鱼类的学科。 这个词看着很无聊, 其实不然, 这个词是唯一个学科名里 带有"YOLO"短语的。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
对于台下很时髦的年轻人来说, 你们已经知道"YOLO"这个缩写 代表着"你的人生只有一次", 因为人生不能重来, 我希望去做我真正梦想的事情: 去探索世界的未知, 去发现新的物种。 我说到做到了。
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.
最近这几年我的研究重点放在了 洞穴鱼类新物种的发现上。 我们发现洞穴里有很多的新物种。 你只需要知道去哪里找就行了, 可能还要身材苗条一点。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
研究洞穴鱼类能够获得许多 生物学和地理学的发现。 它们虽然只是蜷缩在小小洞穴里, 却能够告诉我们世界的大格局, 告诉我们大陆如何漂移和变化, 它们没有眼睛, 却让我们看到 眼睛的进化过程。
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.
一般而言鱼类都有眼睛, 跟我们一样。 所有的脊椎动物本来都有眼睛, 但是当生存环境变了, 如果一种鱼要适应阴冷的洞穴环境, 经过一代又一代的演化, 这些鱼的视力逐渐退化, 现在的洞穴鱼类已经没有眼睛了。 每种洞穴鱼类的进化路线略有不同, 每种鱼类都可以向我们讲述一段特别的地质和生物的故事, 这是我们在发现新物种的时候 激动不已的原因。
So this is a new species we described, from southern Indiana. We named it Amblyopsis hoosieri, the Hoosier cavefish.
这是我们从印第安纳南部发现的新物种。 我们叫它" Amblyopsis hoosieri", 就是印第安纳洞穴鱼的意思。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
它的近亲是肯塔基州的一种洞穴鱼, 生活在猛犸洞穴系统中。 他们因俄亥俄河的出现被分隔开, 已经分开了有几百年了. 从那时起它们的进化路线就不同了 各自在基因结构上演化, 视力各自退化了. 有一种名叫"视紫红质"的基因, 对视力的形成起到关键作用, 人类和这些鱼类都有同样的基因, 但是有种洞穴鱼在进化中 完全丢掉了这个基因, 而其它的洞穴鱼类还保留着. 大自然为我们做了完美的实验 让我们能够从基因角度 学习我们视觉的原理, 能够知道视觉感知的最根本原因.
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.
而且这些洞穴鱼类的基因 能够向我们讲述 地理环境的变化, 可能没有谁比它们更能展示这种变化了. 这是我们在马达加斯加 发现的新物种 取名为"Typhleotris mararybe". 在马达加斯加语中是"大病"的意思, 你们不知道为了找这个物种 我们吃了多少苦头. 不管你信不信, 在污水坑里游泳, 周围都是动物尸体 在满是蝙蝠粪便的洞穴里翻找 肯定不是你生命中 做的最明智的选择, 但是, YOLO!
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
尽管这个鱼差点要杀死我, 我还是很爱它, 因为这种生活在马达加斯加的鱼, 最近的近亲远在6000公里之外, 是一种生活在澳大利亚的鱼类. 我们很清楚这种巴掌大的淡水鱼 是无法在印度洋里游过来的, 所以我们通过对比这两个物种的DNA, 知道他们在一亿年前就已经分隔开了, 这大概就是大陆开始漂移的时候. 事实上这些洞穴鱼根本没挪过窝. 是大陆板块在移动. 这些洞穴鱼类通过它们的DNA, 为我们提供了精确的模型, 让我们知道远古时代 地理变化的具体时间.
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.
这个鱼类刚刚发现 还没有取好名字, 这个鱼类是在墨西哥发现的, 已经频临绝种. 这种鱼类之所以绝种是因为 它们生存的唯一的洞穴环境 因为附近修建的一座大坝而被破坏了. 对洞穴鱼类而言, 很不幸地, 它们栖息的地下水 正好被人类作为饮用水源.
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.
我们目前还不知道这中鱼的近亲. 它跟墨西哥任何物种都不像, 可能来自古巴, 或者佛罗里达, 或者印度. 不管来自哪里, 它都很有可能 告诉我们加勒比海的变迁, 也可能让我们对于视觉的 生物学原理有进一步认识 帮助我们治疗人类的眼疾. 我希望能够在物种灭绝前发现它们.
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.
我愿意用我一生努力 作为一名鱼类学家, 去发现和保护 这些不起眼的、没有眼睛的 洞穴鱼类 它们能够告诉我们太多 这个星球的地理变化 解释为何我们能看见 这五彩的世界.
Thank you.
谢谢.
(Applause)
(掌声)