隱士鳴鶯歌曲多樣性

Warbler Species Fires Up Song Diversity

隱士鳴鶯歌曲多樣性

[CLIP: Hermit warbler song]

[片段:隱鶯之歌]

That’s a bird called the hermit warbler. It breeds along the U.S. West Coast.

那是一種叫隱士鳴鶯的鳥。它在美國西海岸繁殖。

「They have a cute little yellow head and a gray body.」

「它們有一個可愛的黃色的小腦袋和灰色的身體。」

Brett Furnas, a biostatistician at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

加州魚類和野生動物部門的生物統計學家布雷特·弗納斯說道。

Typically, birds sing the same one song within one region because the song attracts mates. And different regions can have slightly different dialects of the song.

通常，鳥類在一個區域唱同一種歌曲，因為歌曲能吸引配偶。不同的地區會有不同的方言歌曲。

「But what we also noticed [was] that there are some places that were exceptions to this rule—that some places, there was more than one song in the same place. And so we were curious why that would be the case.」

「但我們也注意到，有些地方卻很例外，有些地方有不止一首歌曲。我們很好奇為什麼會這樣。」

To investigate, Furnas and his team recorded hermit warbler songs. Lots of them.

為了進行研究，弗納斯和他的團隊錄製了隱士鳴鶯的歌聲。很多隱士鳴鶯的歌聲。

「We had to go all over California, so we went to 100 different locations throughout the state and all the different potential habitats of the species.」

「我們得跑遍整個加州，所以我們去了全州100個不同的地方，以及所有隱士鳴鶯可能的棲息地。」

The researchers analyzed all the hermit warbler songs they collected and discovered that the hermit warbler doesn’t just violate the usual one-song-per-region rule—they positively demolish it.

研究人員分析了他們收集到的所有隱士鳴鶯的鳴聲，發現隱士鳴鶯不僅違反了一地一歌的規則，而且還積極地破壞了這一規則。

「Doing this over a period of 10 years, we found, actually, an amazing 35 different dialects across the state.」

「經過10年的研究，我們發現該州有35種不同的方言。」

Here are just two examples of dialects, slowed down for easier comparison.

這裡只是兩種方言的例子，為了便於比較，我們放慢了速度。

But why would the bird repeatedly alter its song when any changes could affect its ability to attract a mate? The answer is wildfire.

但是當任何變化都可能影響到隱士鳴鶯吸引配偶的能力時，為什麼它們會不斷地改變歌聲呢?答案就是野火。

「Basically, the idea is that warblers are very sensitive to fire in the short term. And so they will abandon an area temporarily, even if it’s just an understory or a low-severity fire that doesn’t destroy the whole stand. And so this creates a vacuum. And then other hermit warblers singing rival dialects move in into this vacuum. And then you end up, maybe a few years later, with two or more different dialects in the same place.」

「基本上，這個想法是隱士鳴鶯在短期內對火非常敏感。所以他們會暫時放棄某一區域，即使那只是一處下層植被或一場不會摧毀整個林場的低強度火災。這就產生了真空。然後其他唱著不同方言的隱士鳴鶯進入了這個真空地帶。也許幾年後，你就會在同一個地方出現兩種或更多的方言。」

The study was published in the journal The Auk: Ornithological Advances.

這項研究發表在《海雀:鳥類學進展》雜誌上。

Even though the California Hermit Warblers sing multiple songs, Furnas says that such musical diversity might actually work in the hermit warblers』 favor.

儘管加州的隱士鳴鶯會唱多種歌曲，弗納斯說，這種音樂的多樣性實際上可能對隱士鳴鶯有利。

「They may have greater resiliency to things like—that are stressors to our natural habitats, like climate change. And so understanding that helps us to make better conservation decisions to protect biodiversity. But it’s also what makes the outdoors interesting and a beautiful place to be, because you can go to one part of the state and hear hermit warblers singing a certain way, and you can go to another part of the state, and they sing a different way. And even though you might not know it’s a hermit warbler, your experience outdoors is enriched by that diversity.」

「它們對氣候變化等自然棲息地的壓力源有更強的彈性。了解這一點有助於我們更好的保護生物多樣性。但這也使戶外變得有趣，讓地方變得美麗，因為我們能在某個地方能聽到隱士鳴鶯以一種方式唱歌，去州其他地方能聽到它們以不同的方式唱歌。即使你不知道隱士鳴鶯，但是你的戶外經驗豐富了很多。