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今日主題：世界第六次物種大滅絕 無脊椎動物成「被遺忘」的受害者
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中英文稿：
Invertebrates Are Forgotten Victims of "Sixth Extinction"
世界第六次物種大滅絕 無脊椎動物成「被遺忘」的受害者

When you think endangered species, which come to mind? Tigers? Pandas? Gorillas? I'm guessing what probably does not are Hawaiian land snails. Yet a new analysis in the journal Conservation Biology suggests that some 95 percent of known Hawaiian land snails in the Amastridae family could already be gone.
當提到瀕臨滅絕的物種，你會想到什麼?老虎?熊貓?大猩猩?我猜你可能不會想到夏威夷陸地蝸牛吧!發表在《保護生物學》雜誌上的一項最新的研究表明95%的夏威夷陸地蝸牛可能已經滅絕。

"That's a horrible level of extinction." Robert Cowie, a biologist at the University of Hawaii.
「這種滅絕的程度，讓人驚悚。」羅伯特‧烤伊，夏威夷大學的一位生物學家說道。
Cowie and his colleagues came up with the 95 percent figure by convening the world's foremost experts on Hawaiian land snails—that is, the dozen or so scientists and naturalists who study the creatures. Through a series of interviews and hundreds of field surveys of the islands, they took their best guess as to whether each of the 325 documented species in the Amastridae family still existed. They think only 15 are still alive, leaving 310 in the "probably extinct" category.
考伊和他的同事們召集了世界上著名的夏威夷陸地蝸牛方面的專家，然後提出了95%這樣的數據——也就是一批或很多研究這種生物的科學家和自然學家。經過一 系列的採訪以及上百次的實地考察，他們猜測同紋螺科中325中檔案記錄的蝸牛物種是否尚存。結果，他們認為，只有15種尚存，其餘的310種可能已經滅絕 了。

There is an organization that officially counts this stuff: the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But the Union lists only 33 of the 325 species as extinct—a gross underestimate, in Cowie's view. And therein lies the problem, he says. Invertebrates, including snails, make up the lion's share of the world's biodiversity. But there's hardly anyone to catalogue it.
有一個官方機構也統計過此數據：「國際自然保護聯盟」。但是該機構只列出了在325個物種中，只有33個物種消失了——在考伊看來，這是一個粗略的估計。考伊說，這樣問題就來了。蝸牛等無脊椎動物，佔據了世界上生物多樣性最大的一部分。但是幾乎沒有人對他們做過記錄。

"It's a tiny, tiny number of people relative to the vast extent of invertebrate biodiversity." And to get an organism onto official endangered lists, you need data to document its disappearance. Data that just aren't there for many invertebrates, due to the labor shortage. "In my more cynical, negative days I throw up my hands and say, why do we even bother? Because we're not going to be able to halt this, to turn around this process. But if you care about this you just can't give up."
「只有寥寥數人從事無脊椎動物生物多樣性的工作。」而需要正式統計該生物滅絕的清單，則需要記錄這些物種消失的記錄。但是由於沒有足夠的人員進行相關的研 究，很多無脊椎動物根本沒有數據啊。「在我悲觀無助的日子裡，我攤開雙手說到，為什麼我們就不嫌麻煩?因為我們沒有能力去阻止這件事兒，去改變這個過程。 但如果你關心這件事兒，你就會根本不會放棄」

And this approach, he says, an almost folkloric reconstruction of what's out there, may be the only way to fully understand the species we're losing. Before they're known only from fossils.

考伊表示說，這種民間用於重塑消失物體的老辦法，可能會成為我們瞭解這種正在消失物種的唯一方法。或許說在這些物種成為化石之前，我們瞭解它們唯一的方法吧。