濒临灭绝的动物介绍英文简单版（科学英语苔藓啊）

濒临灭绝的动物介绍英文简单版（科学英语苔藓啊）"The whole colony（群落） of moss balls this whole grouping moves at about the same speeds and in the same directions " Bartholomaus says. "Those speeds and directions can change over the course（船或飞机的航向、航线） of weeks."Intrigued（激发…的兴趣，引发…的好奇心） he and two colleagues set out （开始、着手）to study these strange moss balls. In the journal Polar Biology（《极地生物学》） they report that the balls can

大家好，我是“非正常人类工作室”作者老李。

没有知识的人生是不完整的。今天开始，我将把全球最新学术期刊上的文章分享给大家。英文原文中，老李标注了一些重要词汇的汉语释义。同时奉上的还有老李自己翻译的版本。喜欢的关注一下吧。

老李才疏学浅，错误肯定不少。希望各位科学大神和英文大神不吝赐教，在评论里就相关科学知识和英文翻译相互交流。

Herd Of Fuzzy（毛茸茸的） Green 'Glacier（冰川） Mice'Baffles （使困惑）Scientists

阿拉斯加冰川上的苔藓球

glacier mice

In 2006 while hiking（远足、徒步旅行） around the Root Glacier（冰川） in Alaska to set up scientific instruments researcher Tim Bartholomaus encountered（遭遇，遇到） something unexpected.

"What the heck（见鬼，表示略微烦恼或惊讶）is this!" Bartholomaus recalls thinking. He's a glaciologist（冰川学家） at the University of Idaho.

Scattered（散播、散开） across the glacier were balls of moss（苔藓）. "They're not attached（附在……上） to anything and they're just resting there on ice " he says. "They're bright green in a world of white."

Intrigued（激发…的兴趣，引发…的好奇心） he and two colleagues set out （开始、着手）to study these strange moss balls. In the journal Polar Biology（《极地生物学》） they report that the balls can persist（存在） for years and move around in a coordinated（协调的、配合的） herdlike fashion（牧群迁徙式的） that the researchers can not yet explain.

"The whole colony（群落） of moss balls this whole grouping moves at about the same speeds and in the same directions " Bartholomaus says. "Those speeds and directions can change over the course（船或飞机的航向、航线） of weeks."

In the 1950s an Icelandic researcher described them in the Journal of Glaciology（《冰川学杂志》） noting that "rolling stones cangather moss." He called them "jkla-ms" or "glacier mice（冰川鼠）."

苔藓球由多种苔藓组成

motion

"They really do look like little mammals（哺乳动物） little mice or chipmunks（花栗鼠）or rats or something running around on the glacier although they run in obviously very slow motion（运动、移动） " says wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert also at the University of Idaho.

Each ball is like a soft wet squishy（黏糊糊的） pillow （枕头）of moss. The balls can be composed of （由…组成）different moss species（物种） and are thought to form around some kind of impurity（杂质） like a bit of dust. They've been seen in Alaska Iceland Svalbard（斯瓦尔巴，位于北冰洋，属于挪威） and South America although they won't grow on just any glacier — it seems that conditions（情况） have to be just right.

Their motion is what interested Gilbert and Bartholomaus as well as their Washington State University colleague Scott Hotaling.

"Most people who would look at them would immediately wonder 'Well I wonder if they roll around out here in some way ' " says Gilbert. "Tumbleweeds（风滚草，生长于北美和澳洲沙漠地区，秋季在地面处折落，随风像球一样到处滚动） come to mind which are obviously totally different but also round and roll around."

She notes that the entire surface of the ball must periodically（周期性的） get exposed（暴露） to the sun. "These things must actually roll around or else that moss on the bottom would die " says Gilbert.

The possibility of their rolling had been noted by other researchers who previously observed that the balls sometimes could be found teetering （摇晃、蹒跚行走）on a pedestal（基座、底座） of ice.

That pedestal might form as the moss ball insulated（使隔热…（保护））the ice underneath it preventing it from melting（融化） as fast as the surrounding（周围的） ice. Scientists suspected that the ball would eventually tip off of the pedestal and roll away.

tracking

To track（确定轨迹、跟踪）the motion of 30 moss balls in Alaska Gilbert and Bartholomaus tagged（给…加标签） each one with a little loop（环、圈） of wire（金属线） that had an identifying sequence（序列、编号） of colored beads（珠子）. Over a period of 54 days in 2009 they tracked the location（位置） of each ball. They returned to check on them in 2010 2011 and 2012.

科学家对苔藓球进行标记跟踪

"By coming back year after year " says Bartholomaus "we could figure out（理解、弄清楚） that these individual（独立的） moss balls were living at least you know five six years and potentially（潜在的）much much longer."

The movement of the moss balls was peculiar（奇特的）. The researchers had expected that the balls would travel around randomly（随机、随意） by rolling off their ice pedestals. The reality was different. The balls moved about an average of an inch a day in a kind of choreographed（设计好的、经过安排的） formation（编队、队形）— like a flock of birds or a herd of wildebeests（角马）.

"When we visited them all they were all just sort of moving relatively（相当地） slowly and initially（开始、最初） toward the south " says Bartholomaus. "Then they all started to speed up（加速） and kind of （有点）start to deviate（偏离轨道、背离）toward the west. And then they slowed down again and progressed even farther to the west."

explanations

The researchers considered several possible explanations.

The first and most obvious（明显的） one is that they just rolled downhill. But measurements showed that the moss balls weren't going down a slope（斜坡）.

"We next thought maybe the wind is sort of blowing them in consistent（一致的） directions " says Bartholomaus "and so we measured the dominant （主导的）direction of the wind."

That didn't explain it either nor did the pattern（模型） of the sunlight.

"We still don't know " he says. "I'm still kind of baffled."

"It's always kind of exciting though when things don't comply with your hypothesis（假设） with the way you think things work " says Gilbert.

The work has charmed（使…着迷） other glacier scientists who dote on the adorable（可爱的） moss balls.

"I think that probably the explanation is somewhere in the physics of the energy and the heat around the surface of the glacier but we haven't quite got there yet " says Ruth Mottram a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological （气象）Institute.

Nicholas Midgley of Nottingham Trent University says that back then he and his colleague Stephen Coulson dissected（解剖） moss balls and put accelerometers（加速度传感器） inside a number of them. "From that we were able to deduce（推论） that they were actually rotating " says Midgley.

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下面是老李翻译的

科学家被一群毛茸茸的绿色“冰川鼠”难住了

2006年，美国爱达荷大学的冰川学家蒂姆·巴托洛默斯，来到位于阿拉斯加的鲁特冰川进行徒步科考。在这次旅行中，他遇到了一件意想不到的事。

冰川鼠

“见鬼！这是什么？”

进入巴托洛默斯视线的是一个个散布在冰川上的是苔藓球。“它们没有附着在任何东西上，就在冰上待着。在这个白色的世界里，它们亮绿的色彩是如此醒目。”

好奇心促使他和两位同事着手研究这些奇怪的苔藓球。他们在《极地生物学》杂志上发表的论文中说，这些苔藓球可以存活数年，而且，它们以一种协调的、类似牧群迁徙的方式，移动！是的，移动！研究人员也搞不明白这是怎么回事。

“整个苔藓球群落，以大约相同的速度向相同的方向移动，”巴托洛默斯说，“而且，几周以后，它们会改变航向和速度，朝着另一个方向进发。”

20世纪50年代，冰岛的一个科学家在《冰川学杂志》上描述过这些神奇的能够移动迁徙的苔藓。他认为“滚动的石头可以聚集苔藓”，并把这些苔藓球称为“冰川鼠”。

移动

野生动物学家索菲娅·吉尔伯特，也来自爱达荷大学。她说，“这些奇妙的苔藓球，确实有点像小型哺乳动物，老鼠、花栗鼠或者别的奔跑在冰川上的动物，尽管它们是以非常慢的速度在奔跑。”

这些又软又湿而且黏糊糊的苔藓枕头，是由许多不同的苔藓品种组成的。人们认为，“枕头”内部应该有某种杂质，比如灰尘，就在这个杂质核周围，它们越滚越大。

苔藓球在阿拉斯加、冰岛、斯瓦尔巴群岛和南美洲都被发现过。当然，并不是任何冰川都能发现它们，因为形成这个奇特现象的条件挺苛刻，必须恰到好处方好。

苔藓球的移动，让吉尔伯特、巴托洛默斯和他们在华盛顿州立大学的同事斯科特· 霍塔林非常感兴趣。

吉尔伯特说: “大多数看到它们的人都会非常好奇，‘好吧，我想知道它们是怎样在冰川上滚来滚去的。’我首先想到的是风滚草。显然，风滚草和苔藓球是不同的，但都是圆的，都在滚来滚去，不是吗？”

吉尔伯特指出，苔藓球的整个表面，必须周期性接受阳光的照耀。“这些东西实际上必须进行滚动，否则底部的苔藓就会死掉的。”

其他科学家也注意到了苔藓球滚动的可能性，因为有时可以发现这些球在冰基上摇摇晃晃的。这个可能起保温作用的基座，把苔藓球和下面的冰隔离开来，防止它像周围的冰一样快速融化。但科学家们怀疑苔藓球最终会从底座上掉下来，然后自己滚走。

追踪

吉尔伯特和巴托洛默斯用一小圈金属丝给30个苔藓球做了标记，金属丝上还有排好序列的珠子，这样，他们就可以追踪这30个苔藓球的踪迹了。2009年，他们花了54天追踪它们。此后的三年，他们每年回到冰川进行检查。

“通过年复一年的观察，”巴托洛默斯说，“我们可以推断出这些苔藓球至少可以存活五六年，甚至很久很久。”

追踪行动很成功。科学家发现这些苔藓球的运动轨迹非常奇特。他们原本以为这些球的移动是随机的，但现实不是这样。这些苔藓球似乎在以一种精心设计的队形，以平均每天一英寸的速度进行移动，就像迁徙途中的一群角马。

巴托洛莫斯说: “最初，苔藓球都是向南移动的，速度较慢。然后，他们开始加速，航向开始折向西边。在之后，它们再次放慢速度，一直向西前进。”

缘由

对于苔藓球这种规律性走位，研究人员思考几种可能。

第一个，也是最先考虑的，就是它们只是在顺着斜坡下滑，但测量结果显示并不是这样。

“我们接下来猜测，也许是风把它们吹向了一致的方向，”巴托洛默斯说，“所以我们又测量了当地的主导风向。”

很遗憾，风向也不是原因。

同样，阳光的因素也解释不了苔藓球的运动轨迹问题。

“我们仍然不知道运动轨迹的原因。我确实有点困惑。”巴托洛默斯说。

但吉尔伯特不这样看，“当事情不符合你的假设，不符合你思考问题的方式时，总是令人兴奋的。”

这项工作也吸引了其他喜爱苔藓球的冰川科学家。

丹麦气象研究所科学家马特拉姆说:“我认为这可能涉及冰川的表面能量和物理学上的热量解释。但我们目前无法求解。”诺丁汉特伦特大学的米基雷说，他解剖了这些苔藓球并在其中一些里面放置了加速度传感器， “我们推断它们实际上是在旋转。”