Complex Discovery

托马斯·赫贝克有处理复杂问题的技巧.

You can see it in his eyes—complex optical organs firing energetic lightning bolts of excitement as he explains concepts of biodiversity.

You can hear it in his voice—complex blends of Czech and Portuguese accents honed during the height of intensive research, 为什么“pele”和“formiga”会混入悦耳的英语解释中.

And you can read it in his research—complex explorations of diverse ecosystems and dense datasets from deep within the Amazon Rainforest.

Luckily for Mico schneideri在美国，复杂性存在于托马斯·赫贝克的DNA中. In fact, it is complexity that allowed this new species of Amazonian primate to emerge from years of fieldwork and surveys. Mico schneideri, 或者施耐德的狨猴, had been misidentified as an entirely different species for nearly three decades because of the scarcity of basic ecological and distributional data.

为了理解这种误解，以及描述它的复杂性 Mico schneideri 没错，我们旅行了将近5小时,000 miles from San Antonio to the forests of the ​​Juruena-Teles Pires mineral province in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. 在Juruena河和Teles Pires河的交汇处, 该省直接位于“森林砍伐弧线”内,” the southern edge of the Amazon Rainforest rapidly being cleared for cattle ranching, 小规模自给农业, and logging. 在这里，Hrbek, Rodrigo Costa-Araújo博士.D., 来自Paraense博物馆Emílio Goeldi和亚马逊联邦大学, and their team began a series of nearly a dozen trips deep into the rainforest’s canopies, cataloging visual and aural observations of what would soon be known as Schneider’s marmoset.

The goal? 获取新的分配记录, specimens, and samples to overcome the previous scarcity of these materials and data in museums and in literature,赫贝克和他的团队在2021年为《澳门金沙赌城线上游戏》杂志发表的一篇文章中写道 Scientific Reports. This fieldwork, called surveying, 由森林徒步和上游独木舟组成, catalog, 定位呼叫和响应观察.

“我们并不是专门寻找一种新的狨猴，”Hrbek承认. Rather, the team was looking to record an abundance of general data about Amazonian marmosets of the genus Mico, marmosets that are “little known endemics of this region and therefore a priority for research and conservation efforts.”

但随着在现场观察常见行为的时间, 使用和理解发声技巧, 分析博物馆收藏的兽皮, 这个团队开始关注他们没有在观察的事实 Mico emiliae, or Snethlage’s marmoset, as Schneider’s marmoset had previously been classified. “很明显，在这个特定的领域, there was something that didn’t match essentially anything else that had been seen before,” Hrbek says.

赫贝克在实验室与23岁的崔妮蒂·科特尼和22岁的伊丽莎白·普罗克特一起工作.

Hrbek knew that the team could not solely rely on observational data to confirm its hunch. 他们求助于过去一个世纪进行的一系列调查. Data from these surveys are spread out in institutions and museums across the world, 从巴西到欧洲. This data helped inform an overview of both the taxonomic revisions and phylogenetic revisions of Mico. 通过对这些修订的实验室分析, 研究小组成员证实了他们的调查数据, 施耐德狨猴作为一个新物种出现.

“The real biodiversity of the Amazon basin is significantly underestimated,” Hrbek says. Biodiversity is driven in part, he explains, by the dynamism of the geology of the Amazon basin. Geological disruptors have the potential to fragment species populations that were previously continuous, allowing them to diverge; they also have the potential to bring previously separated populations into contact with one another. 当这些物种相互作用时, they have the potential to form hybrid groups carrying genes from two different sets of parental species. Over time, this hybrid group may become separated or isolated from its parent species due to the emergence of a behavioral or physical barrier. 如果杂交群体在这种分化中幸存下来，它的种群就会稳定下来, 它最终可能被描述为一个新物种. “尽管这种机制被低估了, it’s important for generating diversity in addition to the traditional mechanisms,” he adds.

Data collection allows analysis and statistics to inform research on the Araguaia dolphin. Inia araguaiaensis 图片由Gabriel Santos-Melo提供.

这都是一天的工作? Hrbek, 澳门金沙赌城线上游戏考尔斯杰出生物学教授, 对新物种不陌生吗. 生态学家和遗传学家, 赫尔贝克名下有二十多个新物种的发现, ranging from a river dolphin in Brazil to a black uakari in Venezuela to a pupfish in Turkey. Hrbek has dedicated his career to exploring our world’s biodiversity and championing conservation efforts.

“亚马逊地区有146种灵长类动物和亚种, representing 20% of the global primate diversity and comprising the most diverse primate fauna in the world,赫贝克和他的团队在2021年的文章中写道. “Characterizing primate species diversity and distribution in the Amazonian arc of deforestation is a necessary first step ... which lends support to biodiversity conservation in this region before the entire biome reaches an environmental point of no return.”

Hrbek reframes this: “If we don’t know the species exists, how do we know we should protect it?”

当然，像这样的问题的答案会很复杂. Often, 生态学家不知道——不能知道——一个物种的存在是因为混凝土, empirical data hasn’t yet been collected (hence Hrbek’s team’s surveys in the ​​Juruena-Teles Pires province). But for Hrbek, 它不仅仅是关于原始数据:它是澳门金沙赌城线上游戏的假设, 作为人类和科学家, 我们对世界上真正的生物多样性知之甚少.

Hrbek uses data-driven approaches in his lab to analyze complexity in biodiversity.

“Conservation efforts are identified and conservation areas are designated based on known species in that ecological region. Decisions are made about adding or removing a particular area from a conservation effort when we think, or don’t think, 一个物种存在于其他地方,” he says. “有由这些‘隐物种’组成的整个生态群落,如果我们不知道它们的存在，或者不关心它们的保护, 我们可以彻底消灭他们.”

Hrbek’s research agenda is to see to it that this doesn’t happen—at least not more than it already has. As the arc of deforestation encroaches ever closer into the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, Hrbek has extended his focus to educating students and communities about the importance of conservation efforts and the effects on the lack thereof. 他是澳门金沙线上赌博官网一年级体验课程“气候变化”的教授,” where he encourages students to inquisitively explore and critically interpret the data fueling climate change arguments in order to draw their own evidence-based conclusions, 而不是简单地接受现有结论的表面价值.

“作为人类，我们倾向于寻求简单的解决方案. 但任何事情都没有简单的解决方案. Complexity is underappreciated; to become comfortable with complexity, 能够在其中发挥作用, 意味着你可以用分析的视角来研究科学, statistics, 从数据驱动的角度进行预测.”

如果复杂性造就了优秀的科学，那么托马斯·赫贝克就是一位优秀的科学家. 这意味着复杂生物多样性的未来掌握在良好的手中.