万物简史 第499期:多灾多难的生命进程(19)

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As Richard Fortey observes: "Somehow it does not seem satisfying just to call them 'lucky ones' and leave it at that." 正如理查德·福泰所说：“仅仅把它们称做‘幸运儿’，这似乎总是不太令人满意。”

If, as seems entirely¹ likely, the event was followed by months of dark and choking smoke, then many of the insect survivors² become difficult to account for. 如果在事件发生之后几个月里到处都是乌黑呛人的烟雾，而情况似乎正是这个样，那么你很难解释许多昆虫竟能存活下来。

"Some insects, like beetles," Fortey notes, "could live on wood or other things lying around. “有的昆虫，比如甲虫，”福泰指出，“可以在木头或周围别的东西上生活。

But what about those like bees that navigate³ by sunlight and need pollen⁴? 但是，像蜜蜂这样的在阳光里飞舞、需要花粉的动物怎么办？

Explaining their survival isn't so easy." 说清楚它们幸存的原因是不太容易的。”

Above all, there are the corals. 尤其是那个珊瑚。

Corals require algae⁵ to survive and algae require sunlight, and both together require steady minimum temperatures. 珊瑚需要藻类维持生命，而藻类需要阳光。二者都需要稳定的起码温度。

Much publicity⁶ has been given in the last few years to corals dying from changes in sea temperature of only a degree or so. 在过去几年里，已经有大量关于珊瑚因海水温度变化了1摄氏度左右而死亡的报道。

If they are that vulnerable to small changes, how did they survive the long impact winter? 要是它们连小小的变化都受影响，它们是怎么挺过撞击造成的漫长的冬天的？

There are also many hard-to-explain regional variations. 还有许多难以解释的区域性差异。

Extinctions seem to have been far less severe in the southern hemisphere than the northern. 灭绝在南半球似乎远不如在北半球那么严重。

New Zealand in particular appears to have come through largely unscathed even though it had almost no burrowing⁷ creatures. 在很大程度上，尤其是新西兰好像完好无损地挺了过来，而它又几乎没有穴居动物，

Even its vegetation was overwhelmingly spared, and yet the scale of conflagration⁸ elsewhere suggests that devastation⁹ was global. 连它的植物也绝大部分幸免于难，而别处的大火烈度表明，灾难是全球性的。

In short, there is just a great deal we don't know. 总之，还有许多问题我们搞不清楚。

 

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