科学家在Twitter上发现的新物种

科学家在Twitter上发现的新物种

Scientists in Denmark have harnessed social media to discover a new type of parasitic fungus.

丹麦科学家利用社交媒体发现了一种新型寄生真菌。

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Natural History Museum made the find after spotting an image of a millipede that was shared on Twitter.

哥本哈根大学自然历史博物馆的研究人员发现了一张在推特上分享的千足虫图片后，做出了这一发现。

Biologist and associate professor Ana Sofia Reboleira of the National Natural History Museum spotted the image when she was scrolling through her feed, according to a statement released by the University. “There, she stumbled upon a photo of a North American millipede shared by her U.S. colleague Derek Hennen of Virginia Tech.”

国家自然历史博物馆的生物学家兼副教授安娜·索非亚·雷博雷拉在浏览推特时发现了这张照片。“在那里，她偶然发现了一张北美千足虫的照片，这张照片是她的美国同事、弗吉尼亚理工大学的德里克·亨宁(Derek Hennen)分享的。”

Reboleira’s interest was piqued by some tiny dots on the millipede. “I could see something looking like fungi on the surface of the millipede. Until then, these fungi had never been found on American millipedes,” she explained, in the statement. “So, I went to my colleague and showed him the image. That’s when we ran down to the museum’s collections and began digging.”

雷博雷拉的兴趣被千足虫身上的一些小点激起了。“我在千足虫的表面看到类似真菌的东西。在此之前，这些真菌从未在美国千足虫身上发现，”她在声明中解释道。“所以，我去找我的同事，给他看了照片。就在那时，我们跑到博物馆的藏品中，开始挖掘。”

Working with her colleague Henrik Enghoff, Reboleira discovered several specimens of the same fungus on a number of millipede specimens in the museum’s enormous collection. The fungus had never been documented before.

雷博莱拉与她的同事亨利克恩霍夫(Henrik Enghoff)合作，在博物馆大量收藏的千足虫标本上发现了同一种真菌的几个标本。这种真菌以前从未被记录过。

The fungus was given a Latin name that acknowledges the role played by social media in its discovery – Troglomyces twitteri.

这种真菌用一个拉丁名字命名，以感谢社交媒体在其发现过程中所发挥的作用——Troglomyces twitteri。

The scientific community is no stranger to knowledge sharing on social media. In 2017, for example, a strange fanged “sea creature” that washed up on a Texas beach in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey quickly went viral after images were posted on Twitter.

科学界对社交媒体上的知识共享并不陌生。例如，2017年，在飓风哈维(Harvey)过后，一只长着奇怪尖牙的“海洋生物”在得克萨斯州的海滩上被冲了上来，在Twitter上发布了这些图片后，这只“海洋生物”迅速走红。

The creature was eventually identified by experts as a fangtooth snake-eel or tusky eel.

专家最终确认这种生物为尖牙蛇鳗或尖牙鳗。