科学美国人60秒 猫鼬对气候感到不适（在线收听）

Meerkats Are Getting Climate Sick

猫鼬对气候感到不适

Karen Hopkin: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin.

Climate change. It’s the culprit behind an increase in droughts and floods, wildfires and storms. And a new study shows that it’s making more meerkats come down with tuberculosis. The findings appear in the journal Nature Climate Change.

凯伦·霍普金：这是《科学美国人》的60秒科学。我是凯伦·霍普金。

气候变化。这是干旱、洪水、野火和风暴增加背后的罪魁祸首。一项新的研究表明，它使更多的猫鼬患上肺结核。研究结果发表在《自然气候变化》杂志上。

Maria Paniw: So tuberculosis is an endemic disease in meerkats. It has been present in the population since meerkats have been studied.

Hopkin: Maria Paniw is a researcher at the Do?ana Biological Research Station in Spain. She says that for meerkats living in the Kalahari, TB outbreaks have been on the rise. Coincidentally, so have the local temperatures.

玛丽亚·帕尼瓦：所以肺结核是猫鼬的一种地方病。自从猫鼬被研究以来，它就一直存在于种群中。

霍普金：玛丽亚·帕尼瓦是西班牙多纳纳生物研究站的研究员。她说，对于生活在卡拉哈里的猫鼬来说，结核病疫情一直在上升。巧合的是，当地的温度也是如此。

Paniw: So we wanted to know whether there was a link between climate change, which you know has been increasing temperature extremes, and increases in tuberculosis outbreaks. And how this may affect populations of this social species.

Hopkin: So Paniw and her colleagues crunched the numbers.

帕尼夫：所以我们想知道气候变化和结核病爆发之间是否有联系，你知道，气候变化导致极端气温升高。以及这将如何影响这个社会物种的种群。

霍普金：所以帕尼瓦和她的同事计算了这些数字。

Paniw: I was very fortunate to collaborate with the Kalahari Meerkat Project which is a fantastic project where we now have over 22 years of very detailed data on individual meerkats and about their survival, their reproduction, their growth, their movement, and so on. So it’s a very rich data set to work with.

帕尼瓦：我很幸运地与卡拉哈里猫鼬项目合作，这是一个了不起的项目，我们现在有超过22年的关于个体猫鼬及其生存、繁殖、生长、运动等的非常详细的数据。因此，这是一个非常丰富的数据集。

Hopkin: They used the data to build models to predict how climate change will affect meerkat populations.

Paniw: Our main results show that climate change affects meerkats primarily by increasing the likelihood of deadly TB outbreaks.

Hopkin: And according to the model, it can do so in two ways.

霍普金：他们利用这些数据建立模型，预测气候变化将如何影响猫鼬种群。

Paniw：我们的主要结果表明，气候变化主要通过增加致命结核病爆发的可能性来影响猫鼬。

霍普金：根据模型，它可以通过两种方式实现。

Paniw: First, extremely hot years induce physiological stress on meerkats because meerkats need to hide from the extreme heat. They do not have enough time to search for food and extreme heat may also be associated with very low rainfall and therefore drought so little food availability.

Paniw：首先，酷热的年份会给猫鼬带来生理压力，因为猫鼬需要躲避酷热。他们没有足够的时间寻找食物，酷热也可能与降雨量极低有关，因此干旱导致粮食供应不足。

Hopkin: That stress increases the probability that an endemic disease will turn into an outbreak that can completely wipe out meerkat populations….with the extinction risk for local groups predicted to double over the next dozen years.

霍普金：这种压力增加了地方病爆发的可能性，这种疾病可能会彻底消灭猫鼬种群…。预计当地种群的灭绝风险将在未来十几年翻一番。

Paniw: And the other way is that climate change also sort of destabilizes local groups and makes male meerkats much more mobile.

帕尼瓦：另一方面，气候变化也会破坏当地群体的稳定，使雄性猫鼬的活动性大大增强

Hopkin: Meerkats live in social groups from which males normally disperse to find mates. And when it’s warmer, males are much more likely to hit the road.

霍普金猫：猫鼬生活在群居中，雄性通常会从群居中分散开来寻找配偶。天气变暖时，雄性更容易上路。

Paniw: And with that they carry disease, they carry tuberculosis with them, and by moving around too much they spread disease between meerkat groups which again increases the chances or the risks of severe outbreaks.

帕尼瓦：它们携带疾病，也携带肺结核，通过过度迁徙，它们在猫鼬群体之间传播疾病，这再次增加了严重疫情爆发的机会或风险。

Hopkin: And Paniw says it’s not merely meerkats that should be concerned about the climate.

霍普金：帕尼说，不仅仅是猫鼬应该关心气候。

Paniw: This finding is particularly interesting and important because tuberculosis is a very widespread disease which affects many species including livestock that is quite important for humans.

帕尼瓦：这一发现特别有趣和重要，因为结核病是一种非常普遍的疾病，影响到许多物种，包括对人类非常重要的牲畜。

Hopkin: Yet another way that climate change could land us all in hot water.

For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Karen Hopkin.

霍普金：气候变化可能会让我们大家陷入困境的另一种方式。

《科学美国人》的《60秒科学》，我是凯伦·霍普金。