【科普翻译团】科学种子科技英语——这是蚂蚁吗？是植物吗？不，这是只蜘蛛！

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【前言】

“科学种子科技英语”为上海青少年科学社特殊周刊板块，旨在经过双语形式翻译国内外最新科学技术科普文案，带领青少年读者们认识全世界最前沿的研究成果概况，普及科学知识、传播科学思维、领悟科学奥秘。自2021年起，该板块重新推出，特邀上海青少年科学社优秀学生会员构成科普翻译团，经过朋友们自己的视角，诠释科学背面的故事，带领更加多的小伙伴学科学、爱科学，共读最前沿、最有趣的科普新闻。

科普翻译团第42期

Is it an ant？Is it a plant？No，it‘s a spider！

这是蚂蚁吗？是植物吗？不，这是只蜘蛛！

Summary:A species of tiny, colorful jumping spider employs two lines of defense to avoid being eaten: camouflaging with plants and walking like an ant. Researchers report that this combination of camouflage and movement mimicry helps the spiders evade spider-eating spiders but does not deter hungry praying mantises.

概要：一种小型的彩色跳蛛有两种避免自己被吃掉的手段：披上和植物颜色类似的守护色、以及模仿蚂蚁爬行。科研人员暗示，结合守护色和行径模仿能帮忙这些蜘蛛规避食蛛蜘蛛，却不会惊动那饥饿的螳螂。

Mimicking ants is a good defense option because they do not make for good eating; ants often have spiny defenses and biting mandibles (and theyre not afraid to fight back), and many also carry chemical repellants or venom. Though the focal spider of this study --Siler collingwoodi -- was already known to move in an ant-like fashion, the researchers wanted to know how accurate its mimicry is, whether it mimics more than one ant species, and how effective this mimicry is at discouraging predators.

模仿蚂蚁是一个很好的防御方式，由于蚂蚁不适合捕食。蚂蚁一般有带刺的防御和能撕咬的下颚（它们还敢于反抗），还有非常多蚂蚁携带化学防护剂或毒素。科研人员想要经过这次科研的焦点--移动方式像蚂蚁同样的科氏翠蛛--，科研它模仿得到底有多精确，它是不是只模仿一种蚂蚁以及它的模仿足不足以劝退捕食者。

The research team also explored the role of the spiders brilliant coloration. "Unlike typical ant-mimicking spiders that mimic the brown or black body color of ants,S. collingwoodi has brilliant body coloration," says first author Hua Zeng, an ecologist at Peking University. "From a humans perspective, it seems to blend well with plants in its environment, but we wanted to test whether their body coloration served as camouflage to protect against predators."

科研团队还探索了蜘蛛绝佳自然色彩的功效“与典型的其他会模仿蚂蚁的棕色或黑色体色的蜘蛛区别，科氏跳蛛的自然色彩非常精妙。”，Hua Zeng, 一名北京大学的环境学家说到，“从人类的方向来看，它和他的环境融合得很好， 但咱们想要认识的是它们的自然色彩是不是能在捕食者面前守护自己。”

To understand how ant-mimicry helps these spiders avoid being eaten, the researchers collected wild ant-mimicking spiders from four geographic locations in southern Hainan, China, and brought them back to the lab. For comparison, they also collected another type of jumping spider that doesnt mimic ants, as well as five co-occurring ant species that they thought might serve as models.

为了认识蜘蛛是怎样经过模仿蚂蚁避免自己被捕食的，科研人员收集了来自中国海南的四种地理地形的野生模仿蚂蚁的蜘蛛，把它们带回了实验室。她们还收集了另一种不模仿蚂蚁的跳蛛，以及五种相对应的蚂蚁种群做为对照。

Back in the lab, the researchers characterized and compared how the ants and spiders moved in terms of how they used individual limbs, as well as their speed, acceleration, and whether they followed a straight path or took a more tortuous trajectory.

科研人员在实验室中描述和对比了蚂蚁和蜘蛛移动时动用的肢体，速度、加速，以及它们的行走路线是笔直还是弯曲的。

They found that, rather than jumping like most jumping spiders,S. collingwoodi move like ants: by raising their front legs to mimic an ants antennae, bobbing their abdomens, and lifting their legs to walk in an ant-like manner. Of the five ant species, the spiders walking style most closely resembled the three smaller ant species, who are also closer to it in size.

她们发掘科氏跳蛛与通常的跳蛛区别，不会跳跃，反而举起它们的前肢假装蚂蚁的触角，她们抬起腹腔和腿模仿蚂蚁的姿态。在那五个蚂蚁种类中， 蜘蛛的行走方式和与她们体型类似的三种较小的蚂蚁同样。

"S. collingwoodiis not necessarily a perfect mimic, because its gait and trajectory showed high similarity with multiple ant species," says Zeng. "Being a general mimic rather than perfectly mimicking one ant species could benefit the spiders by allowing them to expand their range if the ant models occupy different habitats."

“科氏跳蛛的模仿不必定是完美的，由于它的步态和轨迹与许多蚂蚁种类高度类似，”Zeng说，“倘若蚂蚁模特占据区别的栖息地，那样做为一种通常的模仿而不是完美地模仿一种蚂蚁物种能够让蜘蛛扩大它们的范围，从而使它们受益。”

Next, the researchers tested the spiders defenses against two likely predators: a similarly sized jumping spider with color vision that specializes in preying upon other spiders (Portia labiata) and a praying mantis (Gonypeta brunneri) that is a generalist predator with a monochromatic visual system.

接下来，科研人员测试了这种蜘蛛对两种可能的捕食者的防御能力：一种体积类似的跳跃蜘蛛，拥有色觉，专门捕食其他蜘蛛（唇口蛛）；另一种是螳螂，它是一种拥有单色视觉系统的全能捕食者。

To explore the role of color camouflage, the researchers modeled how the two predators would perceiveS. collingwoodi relative to the other prey species against the bac公斤round of two plants that the spiders live on -- the red-flowering West Indian jasmine (Ixora chinensis) and the Fukien tea tree (Carmona microphylla). They found that the ant-mimicking spiders were better camouflaged from both spider and praying mantis predators on the jasmine plant than the tea tree plant.

为了科研伪装色的道理，科研人员模拟了这两种捕食者在科氏跳蛛赖以存活的两种植物--红花西印度茉莉和福建茶树--上是怎样感知这种蜘蛛的，相针对其他猎物而言。她们发掘，模仿蚂蚁的蜘蛛更能在茉莉花上躲避其他跳蛛和螳螂。

When the predators were given the choice of the ant-mimicking spider and the other jumping spider, the predatory spider was more likely to attack the non-mimic; out of 17 trials, the spider launched 5 attacks, all of which were towards the non-mimic. Praying mantises, however, attacked both prey species with equal alacrity.

当捕食者选取模仿蚂蚁的蜘蛛和另一种跳蛛时，捕食性蜘蛛更有可能攻击非模仿者；在17次实验中，蜘蛛发动了5次攻击，所有攻击都是针对非模仿者的。然而，螳螂以一样的敏捷攻击了这两种猎物。

"We initially thought that both predators would behave similarly in the antipredation experiments, but in fact the simulated ant locomotion ofSiler collingwoodi only worked for the jumping spider predator, while the praying mantis showed indiscriminate attacks on both ants and mimics," says senior author Wei Zhang, an evolutionary ecologist at Peking University.

北京大学进化生态学家、资深作者Wei Zhang暗示：“咱们最初认为，这两种食肉动物在反捕食实验中的行径类似，但事实上，科氏跳蛛的模拟蚂蚁运动只适用于食肉跳蛛，而螳螂则对蚂蚁和模拟蚂蚁的蜘蛛进行了不分青红皂白的攻击。”

This difference might be driven by each predators likelihood of being injured from eating an ant. The praying mantises are much larger than their prey, so they can get away with eating spiny ants without risking grave injury, but this is not the case for the predatory spiders.

这种差异可能是由于每种捕食者因吃蚂蚁而受伤的可能性导致的。螳螂比猎物大得多，因此它们能够在不冒严重受伤危害的状况下吃掉多刺的蚂蚁，但捕食性蜘蛛的状况并非如此。

"For the spider predator, a random attack on an ant could result in injury, so they are very careful predators and will only attack if they can distinguishS. collingwoodi from ants with a high degree of certainty," says Zhang.

Zhang说：“针对蜘蛛捕食者来讲，对蚂蚁的随机攻击可能会引起损伤，因此它们是非常小心的捕食者，仅有当它们能够高度确定地区分柯林伍德蛛和蚂蚁时，它们才会攻击。”

However, losing a limb compromised the ant-mimicking spiders ability to avoid the predatory spiders attention, probably by preventing them from accurately mimicking ants.

然而，失去一条腿可能会妨碍模仿蚂蚁的蜘蛛准确地模仿蚂蚁，从而损害了模仿蚂蚁的蛛躲避捕食者重视的能力。

Story Source:

Cell Press

故事源自：

细胞出版社

科技英语词汇

mandiblen.下颌骨

coloration n. 自然色彩

camouflage n. 守护色

trajectory n.轨迹

compromise v.妥协

mantis n.螳螂

——倪嘉栎 上海外国语大学附庸外国语学校

译者说：

这次翻译我选取了来自细胞出版社的一项科研，其重点内容是：一种小型的彩色跳蛛有两种避免自己被吃掉的手段：披上和植物颜色类似的守护色、以及模仿蚂蚁爬行。科研人员暗示，结合守护色和行径模仿能帮忙这些蜘蛛规避食蛛蜘蛛，却不会惊动那饥饿的螳螂。在翻译过程中，我不仅学习了非常多生物学的知识，还认识到了中英互译中用词准确的重要性。