美国国家公共电台 NPR In The Battle To Save Frogs, Scientists Fight Fungus With Fungus

In The Battle To Save Frogs, Scientists Fight Fungus¹ With Fungus 

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A deadly fungus is contributing to the devastation³ of frog populations around the world, not including BJ Leiderman, who writes our theme music. So far, it's wiped out 200 species. And scientists are racing⁴ to find a way to immunize frogs. As Lauren Sommer of member station KQED reports, that's being tested now in the mountains of California.

LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE⁵: Search and rescue is something Jessie Bushell does in a very unconventional way.

SOMMER: She gets up before dawn to meet a helicopter that's flying in from the Sierra Nevada.

JESSIE BUSHELL: The doors fly open. The firefighters start unloading these large white coolers.

SOMMER: Coolers filled with winkling, green tadpoles⁶ - they're mountain yellow-legged frogs, the only survivors⁷ of a deadly outbreak at their remote lake. The chytrid fungus had hit, just as it had in many other places.

BUSHELL: When it hits, it's within weeks that they're just gone - just literally⁸ gone.

SOMMER: So last summer, Bushell brought the survivors here to the San Francisco Zoo, where she's the director of conservation.

BUSHELL: This one's also, I think, really pretty if you look at his marbling on his back.

SOMMER: Those tadpoles are frogs now. And more than 200 of them are getting an experimental vaccine⁹ against chytrid fungus, one that could matter to frogs worldwide.

BUSHELL: So what we do is we expose them to small amounts of this fungus.

SOMMER: The frogs get sick. But that's what Bushell wants. It teaches their immune systems how to fight the fungus. Then before it kills them, Bushell clears it up with an anti-fungal treatment. The idea is that when the frogs get the fungus again out in the wild, they'll be ready.

SOMMER: That's the hope, at least. Bushell and a field crew are carrying the frogs up a rocky trail south of Lake Tahoe in an area called the Desolation Wilderness¹⁰. They're loaded into backpacks, each frog in its own tiny Tupperware container. They wind their way up to a sapphire-blue lake...

SOMMER: ...And set the frogs free one by one.

BUSHELL: It's a new frog home, yeah.

SOMMER: The fungus is here. So their immunity¹¹ will be tested.

BUSHELL: Three, two, one.

BUSHELL: Oh. (Laughter) It's like letting your kids go. Go. Be wild (laughter).

ROLAND KNAPP: Yeah. It's the best chance that we know how to give them.

SOMMER: That's Roland Knapp, a biologist with the University of California, Santa Barbara who has tracked frog die-offs across the Sierra.

KNAPP: I saw the biggest one I've ever seen last summer. Thousands of dying frogs - it was pretty rough to see.

SOMMER: Which is why this is a last-ditch effort to save yellow-legged frogs.

KNAPP: It sometimes seems a little crazy. It's a huge amount of work.

SOMMER: You couldn't do this for every frog species, Knapp says. But some frogs only live in captivity¹² now. They're extinct in the wild. And they don't have much hope of going back unless treatments like this work.

KNAPP: We're staring at what could be the extinction¹³ of a significant fraction of the world's amphibians¹⁴.

SOMMER: Preventing that extinction isn't hopeless, Knapp says. But it could depend in large part on the success of these mountain yellow-legged frogs. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Sommer in California's Desolation Wilderness.

(SOUNDBITE OF HELICOPTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF FROG CROAKING)

(SOUNDBITE OF HIKING)

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER LAPPING)

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER PLOP)

1 fungus   

n.真菌，真菌类植物

参考例句：

• Mushrooms are a type of fungus.蘑菇是一种真菌。
• This fungus can just be detected by the unaided eye.这种真菌只用肉眼就能检查出。

2 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

3 devastation   

n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤

参考例句：

• The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
• There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 racing   

n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的

参考例句：

• I was watching the racing on television last night.昨晚我在电视上看赛马。
• The two racing drivers fenced for a chance to gain the lead.两个赛车手伺机竞相领先。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 tadpoles   

n.蝌蚪( tadpole的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The pond teemed with tadpoles. 池子里有很多蝌蚪。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Both fish and tadpoles have gills. 鱼和蝌蚪都有鳃。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

7 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

8 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

9 vaccine   

n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的

参考例句：

• The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives.脊髓灰质炎疫苗挽救了数以百万计的生命。
• She takes a vaccine against influenza every fall.她每年秋季接种流感疫苗。

10 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

11 immunity   

n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权

参考例句：

• The law gives public schools immunity from taxation.法律免除公立学校的纳税义务。
• He claims diplomatic immunity to avoid being arrested.他要求外交豁免以便避免被捕。

12 captivity   

n.囚禁；被俘；束缚

参考例句：

• A zoo is a place where live animals are kept in captivity for the public to see.动物园是圈养动物以供公众观看的场所。
• He was held in captivity for three years.他被囚禁叁年。

13 extinction   

n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种

参考例句：

• The plant is now in danger of extinction.这种植物现在有绝种的危险。
• The island's way of life is doomed to extinction.这个岛上的生活方式注定要消失。

14 amphibians   

两栖动物( amphibian的名词复数 )； 水陆两用车； 水旱两生植物； 水陆两用飞行器

参考例句：

• The skin of amphibians is permeable to water. 两栖动物的皮肤是透水的。
• Two amphibians ferry them out over the sands. 两辆水陆两用车把他们渡过沙滩。