The tropics are well known for their biodiversity. But another hotspot? Mountains. Like the Hengduan Mountains, in south-central China.
热带地区因其生物多样性而出名，但是其他的较热的地方呢？比如像中国南部的横断山脉。
"It'll look very much like this kind of familiar temperate alpine system, but the plant diversity there is off the charts."
“它看起来很像常见的温带高山系统，但是它的生物多样性没有图表表示。”
Rick Ree is associate curator of botany at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Rick Ree是芝加哥一所博物馆植物学领域的副馆长。
These mountains harbor a third of all China's plant species. And one hypothesis for mountain biodiversity is that mountain uplift creates new climates and habitats. "You'll see coniferous forests, limestone and granite outcrops with glaciers and rivers and alpine meadows."
这些山港有三分之一都是中国的植物种类，关于山地生物多样性的一个假说是山脉隆起创造了新的气候与栖息地。“你将会看到针叶林，石灰石和花岗岩在冰川、河流和高山牧场中露头。
Plants take advantage of the new niches, and diversify.
植物利用山崖上新的凹洞自行繁衍。
Now Ree and his colleague, Yaowu Xing, have evidence supporting the idea for connection between mountain building and biodiversity. They used DNA data to build an evolutionary tree of plants in the Hengduan. Then they calibrated the tree with fossil data. And they saw an explosion in diversification around eight million years ago—right when uplift occurred. The results are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Yaowu Xing and Richard H. Ree, Uplift-driven diversification in the Hengduan Mountains, a temperate biodiversity hotspot]
现在Ree和他的同事Yaowu Xing，有证据支持山脉构成与生物多样性之间具有联系这一观点，他们利用DNA数据建立了横断山脉植物的进化树，然后他们用化石数据进行校准。他们发现了在八百万年前，当隆起发生时，生物爆炸性地多样发展。研究结果发表在美国国家科学院学报上。
So if new microclimates create new opportunities for diversification: what about global climate change? "If we look back on the history of life, one very striking pattern that we can see is that evolutionary diversification is pretty strongly associated with changing conditions. The flipside to change is that some species go extinct and some species diversify. So we're faced with both prospects I think going forward."
因此，如果新的气候能够创造新的生物多样性环境：那么全球气候变化又意味着什么呢？如果我们回顾一下生命的历史，我们能够看到一个非常引人注目的模式：进化的多样性与变化的条件息息相关，另一方面来讲，改变会让一些物种灭绝，让另一些变得更加多样。我们面临着两个可能，我希望我们能够向前。
—Christopher Intagliata
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