The tropics are well known for their biodiversity. But another hotspot? Mountains. Like the Hengduan Mountains, in south-central China.

熱帶地區(qū)因其生物多樣性而出名，但是其他的較熱的地方呢？比如像中國(guó)南部的橫斷山脈。

"It'll look very much like this kind of familiar temperate alpine system, but the plant diversity there is off the charts."

“它看起來(lái)很像常見(jiàn)的溫帶高山系統(tǒng)，但是它的生物多樣性沒(méi)有圖表表示?！?/p>

Rick Ree is associate curator of botany at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Rick Ree是芝加哥一所博物館植物學(xué)領(lǐng)域的副館長(zhǎng)。

These mountains harbor a third of all China's plant species. And one hypothesis for mountain biodiversity is that mountain uplift creates new climates and habitats. "You'll see coniferous forests, limestone and granite outcrops with glaciers and rivers and alpine meadows."

這些山港有三分之一都是中國(guó)的植物種類(lèi)，關(guān)于山地生物多樣性的一個(gè)假說(shuō)是山脈隆起創(chuàng)造了新的氣候與棲息地。“你將會(huì)看到針葉林，石灰石和花崗巖在冰川、河流和高山牧場(chǎng)中露頭。

Plants take advantage of the new niches, and diversify.

植物利用山崖上新的凹洞自行繁衍。

Now Ree and his colleague, Yaowu Xing, have evidence supporting the idea for connection between mountain building and biodiversity. They used DNA data to build an evolutionary tree of plants in the Hengduan. Then they calibrated the tree with fossil data. And they saw an explosion in diversification around eight million years ago—right when uplift occurred. The results are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Yaowu Xing and Richard H. Ree, Uplift-driven diversification in the Hengduan Mountains, a temperate biodiversity hotspot]

現(xiàn)在Ree和他的同事Yaowu Xing，有證據(jù)支持山脈構(gòu)成與生物多樣性之間具有聯(lián)系這一觀點(diǎn)，他們利用DNA數(shù)據(jù)建立了橫斷山脈植物的進(jìn)化樹(shù)，然后他們用化石數(shù)據(jù)進(jìn)行校準(zhǔn)。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了在八百萬(wàn)年前，當(dāng)隆起發(fā)生時(shí)，生物爆炸性地多樣發(fā)展。研究結(jié)果發(fā)表在美國(guó)國(guó)家科學(xué)院學(xué)報(bào)上。

So if new microclimates create new opportunities for diversification: what about global climate change? "If we look back on the history of life, one very striking pattern that we can see is that evolutionary diversification is pretty strongly associated with changing conditions. The flipside to change is that some species go extinct and some species diversify. So we're faced with both prospects I think going forward."

因此，如果新的氣候能夠創(chuàng)造新的生物多樣性環(huán)境：那么全球氣候變化又意味著什么呢？如果我們回顧一下生命的歷史，我們能夠看到一個(gè)非常引人注目的模式：進(jìn)化的多樣性與變化的條件息息相關(guān)，另一方面來(lái)講，改變會(huì)讓一些物種滅絕，讓另一些變得更加多樣。我們面臨著兩個(gè)可能，我希望我們能夠向前。

—Christopher Intagliata