科学美国人(翻译)：鹦鹉正在美国安家 2019.07.18

Parrots Are Making U。S。 Home

鹦鹉正在美国安家

You might expect to hear parrots like these in the wild in South America. But these birds are actually nesting in the middle of Chicago. Despite being known as Monk parakeets, the green and grey birds are true parrots. And they’ve been living in the Windy City since the 1970s. But not just there.

你可能会在南美洲野外听到像这样的鹦鹉。但这些鸟实际上是在芝加哥中部筑巢。尽管被称为和尚鹦鹉,绿色和灰色的鸟是真正的鹦鹉。自20世纪70年代以来,他们一直住在风城。但不仅仅是那里。

“There are Monk Parakeets in many, many states。 They're breeding in around 21 states。”Jenny Uehling, a PhD student now at Cornell, who was at the University of Chicago when she studied these birds。“Certain populations will pop up in certain states and then disappear, but they're by far the most widespread of any of the species。”

“很多州都有和尚鹦鹉。它们在21个州繁殖。Jenny Uehling是康奈尔大学的一名博士生，她在芝加哥大学研究这些鸟类的时候也在那里。“某些种群会在某些州出现，然后消失，但它们是迄今为止分布最广的物种。”

Uehling wanted to know how many non-native parrots were living in the U.S. To do this: “We used eBird and Christmas Bird Count or CBC. We use these two databases because they have the largest spatial distribution of data basically for the United States.”

Uehling想知道有多少非本地鹦鹉生活在美国。我们使用这两个数据库是因为它们基本上是美国最大的数据空间分布。”

Uehling and her team looked at data collected from 2002 to 2016 and deduced that there were 56 different species of parrots living free in 43 states. Of these species, 25 of them had become naturalized, that is: “able to successfully breed and maintain their own population without the addition of additional individuals from captivity.”

Uehling和她的团队研究了从2002年到2016年收集的数据,推断出在43个州有56种不同种类的鹦鹉自由生活。在这些物种中,有25个已经归化,也就是说:“能够成功地繁殖和维持自己的种群,而不需要从圈养中增加额外的个体。”

Most of these non-native parrots were either released by owners or escaped from captivity。 Some established breeding populations。 And some of these new populations are saving entire bird species。

这些非本土鹦鹉大部分要么被主人放生,要么从囚禁中逃脱。一些已建立的繁殖种群。其中一些新种群正在拯救整个鸟类物种。

“The Red Crowned Parrot is declining in its native range, but it's actually increasing in the U。S。 and it's becoming pretty common。 And so I think that leads to a really interesting question of, you know, could we possibly use these populations of non-native parrot species to understand the biology of a species declining in its native range。”The study is in the Journal of Ornithology。 [Jennifer J。 Uehling, Jason Tallant and Stephen Pruett-Jones,Status of naturalized parrots in the United States]

“红冠鹦鹉在其本土范围内数量正在下降，但在美国却在增加，而且变得相当普遍。所以我认为这就引出了一个非常有趣的问题，你知道，我们是否可以利用这些非本地鹦鹉种群来理解一个物种在其本土范围内的生物衰退。这项研究发表在《鸟类学杂志》上。

Florida may have a half million monk parakeets. And they’re even hardy enough to live year-round in Brooklyn and the Bronx, as well as Chicago. And if you’ve ever heard the racket they make it’s clear that these monks never took a vow of silence.

佛罗里达州可能有50万只和尚鹦鹉。他们甚至可以一年到头都住在布鲁克林、布朗克斯和芝加哥。如果你听过他们的吵闹声,你就会明白,这些僧侣从来没有发誓要保持沉默。

—Lucy Huang

—来自Lucy Huang