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Hydrothermal vents are not the only parts of the deep ocean that are revealing unexpected biological diversity.[qh]
热液喷口并不是深海中唯一揭示意想不到的生物多样性的部分。[qh]
Dr Tim O'Hara is a senior curator of marine zoology at the Melbourne Museum in Australia.[qh]
蒂姆·奥哈拉博士是澳大利亚墨尔本博物馆海洋动物学方面的高级馆长。[qh]
In recent years, he has headed up two missions to explore the sea floor off the continental margin along the east coast of Australia and in the depths of the Indian Ocean.[qh]
近年来，他领导了两个探索澳大利亚东海岸大陆边缘海底和印度洋深处海底的任务。[qh]
In a reminder of how little is known of deep-sea environments, these missions were the first attempts to map these regions in any detail.[qh]
提醒人们对深海环境知之甚少，这些任务首次尝试详细绘制这些区域的地图。[qh]
For O'Hara, the real revelation of both trips was the incredibly rich biological world their sampling revealed.[qh]
对于奥哈拉来说，这两次旅程的真正启示是他们的采样所揭示的令人难以置信的丰富的生物世界。[qh]
Even several kilometres below the surface, the flanks of the seamounts are rich with life, including corals, crustaceans and a multitude of bizarre-looking fish.[qh]
即使在海面以下几公里处，海山的侧翼也有丰富的生物，包括珊瑚、甲壳类动物和大量奇形怪状的鱼类。[qh]
Although it will take decades for scientists to finish cataloguing the species the expeditions found, it is likely as many as 30% will turn out to be new to science.[qh]
尽管科学家们需要几十年的时间来完成对探险队发现的物种的编目，但可能有多达30%的物种将成为科学上的新物种。[qh]
O'Hara sees this as a reminder that even the most sophisticated deep-sea surveys are little more than isolated snapshots of a much larger world.[qh]
奥哈拉认为这是一个提醒，即使是最复杂的深海调查也只不过是一个更大世界的孤立快照。[qh]
Given the limited nature of this data, it might seem impossible to develop a sophisticated understanding of the distribution of biodiversity in the deep.[qh]
鉴于这些数据的有限性，似乎不可能对深海生物多样性的分布形成一个复杂的理解。[qh]
But incredibly, that is precisely what has begun to emerge out of O'Hara's research.[qh]
但令人难以置信的是，这正是从奥哈拉的研究中开始出现的结果。[qh]
The story begins with brittle stars, relatives of starfish that use their long, spiny arms to move across the sea floor.[qh]
故事从海蛇尾开始，海蛇尾是海星的亲戚，它们用长而多刺的手臂在海底移动。[qh]
Mostly found in deep water and spread through every ocean, brittle stars are also extremely diverse, with more than 2,200 species classified to date.[qh]
海蛇尾主要分布在深水中，分布在各大洋中，它们也非常多样化，迄今为止已分类出的物种超过2200种。[qh]
As part of a project to understand the distribution of these various species of brittle stars, O'Hara and his team assembled genetic material from museums all over the world.[qh]
作为了解这些不同种类海蛇尾分布的项目的一部分，奥哈拉和他的团队从世界各地的博物馆收集了遗传材料。[qh]
This allowed them to map where different species were found.[qh]
这使他们能够绘制出发现不同海尾蛇物种地点的地图。[qh]
But as their map grew more detailed, O'Hara realised that it didn't just offer a way of visualising the current distribution of brittle stars.[qh]
但随着他们的地图变得越来越详细，奥哈拉意识到，它不仅提供了一种可视化海蛇尾现今分布的方法。[qh]
Instead, by tracing the development of the various species back through evolutionary time, it was possible to chart rates of diversification in different parts of the world.[qh]
而通过追溯不同海尾蛇物种在进化过程中的发展，就有可能绘制出世界不同地区物种多样化的速率。[qh]
O'Hara is now working on a far larger project that aims to use genetic analysis to map the history of biodiversity in the oceans over the past 100m years.[qh]
奥哈拉现在正致力于一个更大的项目，旨在利用基因分析绘制过去1亿年海洋生物多样性的历史。[qh]
“My dream is to be able to say: ‘We can see that 20m years ago, all the animals in the Atlantic flooded downwards, and then the circumpolar current swept them around so they populated Tasmania,' and so on.[qh]
“我的梦想是能够说:‘我们可以看到，2000万年前，大西洋上所有的动物都被向下涌去，然后环极洋流把它们冲冲到周围，所以它们在塔斯马尼亚岛定居，’等等。[qh]
Because if we can do that, we can make an animated map that shows the swirling movement of biodiversity across tens of millions of years.”[qh]
因为如果我们能做到这一点，我们就可以制作一张动画地图，显示数千万年来生物多样性的流转运动。”[qh]
