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听力文本
This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
Thirty million white-tailed deer now live in North America. "That's a lotta deer." Megan Gall, a sensory ecologist at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. In her Hudson Valley locale, "there was a recent estimate here that you could have somewhere between 20 and 40 deer per square mile."
These prolific grazers have been blamed for many things: munching on baby trees "and that's a big problem because they are going to prevent forest regeneration." They also change the structure of the forest understory, "which is no good for birds that live there, small rodents that live there." And they contribute to the lyme disease problem as tick hosts.
To all that, we can now add a new accusation: that deer are altering the very acoustics of the forest, by pruning trees and changing the way sounds — like bird calls — travel through the trees.
Gall and her team investigated plots of forest where deer graze, and others where they were excluded. In each thirty-by-thirty-foot plot, they placed a speaker at one end, playing white noise, tones or trills. And recorded it all with a microphone in the opposite corner.
Then, they used software to analyze the recorded sounds. They found that while there was no difference in the loudness of the captured sounds among plots, the recordings captured in the grazed-upon plots did have higher sound fidelity — meaning they were closer in quality to the original playback tracks.
Now on the face of it, that might sound like a good thing. But as Gall explains: "If your sound has better fidelity, it's gonna be able to be picked up by more individuals. And so if you're a territorial animal you might get into more fights. If you're worried about predators, predators might have an easier time hearing you. And so higher fidelity isn't always better." The results are in the journal PLOS ONE.
And to be clear, the researchers aren't arguing for any specific intervention here. "Yeah, I mean the deer situation is a little bit of minefield and I don't know how much I want to weigh in on it." But the findings might give advocates for increased deer management a bit more ammunition.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
参考译文
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
目前有三千万白尾鹿生活在北美。“那是很多鹿。”纽约州波基普西市瓦萨学院的感官生态学家梅根·加尔说到。在她所在的哈德逊河谷地区，“最近的一项估计显示，每平方英里可能有20到40只鹿。”
这些数量众多的食草动物因许多事情备受指责：啃食树苗，“这是一个严重的问题，因为它们会阻碍森林再生。”它们还改变了森林下层植被的结构，“这对生活在那里的鸟类和小型啮齿动物没有好处。”另外，它们是蜱虫的宿主，会传播莱姆病。
除此之外，我们现在还可以加上一个新指控：通过修剪树木和改变鸟鸣等声音穿越树林的方式，白尾鹿正在改变森林所特有的传声效果。
加尔和团队调查了白尾鹿觅食的森林区域，以及排除它们的其他区域。在每块30×30英尺大小的区域，他们在一端放置一个扬声器，播放白噪音、音调或颤音。在另一端放置一个麦克风，录下所有声音。
然后，他们用软件来分析录制的声音。他们发现，虽然在不同区域录音的音量没有区别，但在遭啃食区域录制的声音确实具有更高的保真度——这意味着其音质更接近于原始回放音轨。
乍一听，这可能是件好事。但正如加尔解释的那样：“如果你的声音有更好的保真度，那就能被更多个体听到。如果你是有地盘意识的动物，你就会卷入更多争斗。如果你担心捕食者，那捕食者可能更容易听到你的声音。因此，更高的保真度并一定总是好事。”这项研究结果发表在《公共科学图书馆·综合》期刊上。
需要明确的是，研究人员并不支持任何具体的干预措施。“我的意思是，白尾鹿的处境有点像雷区，我不确定自己想参与多少。”但这一研究结果可能会给主张加强白尾鹿管理的人提供更多证据。
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
重点讲解
重点讲解：
1. contribute to 促成；促使；是导致…的原因之一；
The report says design faults in both the vessels contributed to the tragedy.
报告说两艘船存在的设计缺陷也促成了这场悲剧的发生。
2. on the face of it 乍看起来；最初看来；
On the face of it that seems to make sense. But the figures don't add up.
乍一看,似乎讲得通，但这些数字对不起来。
3. argue for 支持；
This is not to argue for laissez-faire.
这并不是要支持放任政策。
4. weigh in on 参加,参与(讨论等)；对…发表意见；
The President's political advisers also weighed in on the plan.
总统的政治顾问也对这项计划发表了看法。
