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The meek may not just inherit the Earth, they could help keep the planet cool.
謙卑之人不僅能夠贏得天下，而且還可以幫助這顆星球降溫。
The meek in this case being ants.
這里的謙卑之人指的是螞蟻。
For a quarter-century, geographer Ronald Dorn of Arizona State University and his students have studied how ants, termites and tree roots affect rock weathering.
亞利桑那州立大學(xué)地理學(xué)家羅納德·朵恩和他的學(xué)生們25年來(lái)一直從事螞蟻，白蟻及樹(shù)根對(duì)巖石風(fēng)化影響的研究。
Rocks like plagioclase and olivine that contain calcium and magnesium naturally absorb carbon dioxide to become limestone or dolomite.
比如含有鈣和鎂的斜長(zhǎng)石和橄欖石可以自然吸收二氧化碳轉(zhuǎn)變成石灰?guī)r和白云石。
The more rock that’s exposed, the more CO2 gets trapped.
暴露的巖石越多，吸收的二氧化碳就越多。
And ants apparently greatly speed up that process.
而明顯的是，正是螞蟻大大加速了這一進(jìn)程。
At Dorn's six test sites in Arizona and Texas, eight different kinds of ants were found to accelerate the absorption of atmospheric CO2 by as much as 335 times compared with ant-free areas.
在亞利桑那州和德克薩斯州的6個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)場(chǎng)所，朵恩的團(tuán)隊(duì)發(fā)現(xiàn)8種不同類(lèi)型的螞蟻可以加速對(duì)空氣中二氧化碳的吸收，而且是沒(méi)有螞蟻地方的約335倍。
The research is in the journal Geology.
這項(xiàng)研究已經(jīng)在《地質(zhì)學(xué)》雜志上發(fā)表。
Exactly how ants enhance this carbon dioxide trapping remains unclear.
目前仍不清楚螞蟻是如何具體加速二氧化碳吸收。
The activity could even be due not to the ants, but to the microbes they carry.
但這一加速過(guò)程甚至可能不是出于螞蟻?zhàn)陨恚且驗(yàn)樗鼈兯鶖y帶的微生物所致。
Regardless, there are a lot of ants on Earth, as many as 10 trillion individuals by one estimate.
無(wú)論如何，在地球上有很多螞蟻，據(jù)估計(jì)大約有10萬(wàn)億多。
Dorn even speculates that the proliferation of ants some 66 million years ago might be why this recent Cenozoic era has been, until very recently, so much cooler than earlier epochs.
朵恩甚至推測(cè)大約6600萬(wàn)年前螞蟻的增殖可能就是導(dǎo)致最近，新生代氣候形成的原因，直到最近比早先時(shí)代的氣溫低很多。
Aesop gave ants a reputation for being hard workers.
作家伊索盛贊螞蟻是辛勤的工人。
A lot of that effort may have been for a moderate climate's benefit.
而它們的辛勤付出可能會(huì)有益于溫和氣候的形成。
