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TEDTalks, E.O. Wilson – TED Prize wish: Help build the Encyclopedia of Life (2007)

E.O. Wilson – TED Prize wish: Help build the Encyclopedia of Life (2007)

I have all my life wondered what "mind-boggling" meant. After two days here, I declare myself boggled, and enormously impressed, and feel that you are one of the great hopes. Not just for American achievement in science and technology, but for the whole world. I've come, however, on a special mission on behalf of my constituency. Which are the 10 to the 18th-power -- that's a million trillion -- insects and other small creatures, and to make a plea for them. If we were to wipe out insects alone, just that group alone, on this planet -- which we are trying hard to do -- the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. And within a few months. Now, how did I come to this particular position of advocacy?

As a little boy, and through my teenage years, I became increasingly fascinated by the diversity of life. I had a butterfly period, a snake period, a bird period, a fish period, a cave period and finally and definitively, an ant period. By my college years, I was a devoted myrmecologist, a specialist in the biology of ants. But my attention and research continued to make journeys across the great variety of life on Earth in general. Including all that it means to us as a species, how little we understand it and how pressing a danger that our activities have created for it.

Out of that broader study has emerged a concern and an ambition, crystallized in the wish that I'm about to make to you. My choice is the culmination of a lifetime commitment that began with growing up on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, on the Florida peninsula. As far back as I can remember, I was enchanted by the natural beauty of that region and the almost tropical exuberance of the plants and animals that grow there. One day when I was only seven years old and fishing, I pulled a pinfish -- they're called, with sharp dorsal spines -- up too hard and fast. And I blinded myself in one eye. I later discovered I was also hard of hearing, possibly congenitally, in the upper registers. So in planning to be a professional naturalist -- I never considered anything else in my entire life -- I found that I was lousy at bird watching and couldn't track frog calls either. So I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger: the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems. The little things, as I like to say, who run the world. In so doing, I reached a frontier of biology so strange, so rich that it seemed as though it exists on another planet. In fact, we live on a mostly unexplored planet. The great majority of organisms on Earth remain unknown to science.

In the last 30 years, thanks to explorations in remote parts of the world and advances in technology, biologists have, for example, added a full one-third of the known frog and other amphibian species, to bring the current total to 5,400. And more continue to pour in. Two new kinds of whales have been discovered, along with two new antelopes, dozens of monkey species and a new kind of elephant. And even a distinct kind of gorilla! At the extreme opposite end of the size scale, the class of marine bacteria, the Prochlorococci -- that will be on the final exam -- although discovered only in 1988, are now recognized as likely the most abundant organisms on Earth. And moreover, responsible for a large part of the photosynthesis that occurs in the ocean. These bacteria were not uncovered sooner because they are also among the smallest of all Earth's organisms -- so minute that they cannot be seen with conventional optical microscopy. Yet life in the sea may depend on these tiny creatures.

These examples are just the first glimpse of our ignorance of life on this planet. Consider the fungi -- including mushrooms, rusts, molds and many disease-causing organisms. 60,000 species are known to science, but more than 1.5 million have been estimated to exist. Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms -- if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms. About 16,000 species of nematode worms have been discovered and diagnosed by scientists; there could be hundreds of thousands of them, even millions, still unknown. This vast domain of hidden biodiversity is increased still further by the dark matter of the biological world of bacteria, which within just the last several years still were known from only about 6,000 species of bacteria worldwide. But that number of bacteria species can be found in one gram of soil, just a little handful of soil, in the 10 billion bacteria that would be there. It's been estimated that a single ton of soil -- fertile soil -- contains approximately four million species of bacteria, all unknown.

So the question is: what are they all doing? The fact is, we don't know. We are living on a planet with a lot of activities, with reference to our living environment, done by faith and guess alone. Our lives depend upon these creatures. To take an example close to home: there are over 500 species of bacteria now known -- friendly bacteria -- living symbiotically in your mouth and throat probably necessary to your health for holding off pathogenic bacteria.

At this point I think we have a little impressionistic film that was made especially for this occasion. And I'd like to show it. Assisted in this by Billie Holiday. (Video)

And that may be just the beginning! The viruses, those quasi-organisms among which are the prophasias -- the gene weavers that promote the continued evolution in the lives of the bacteria -- are a virtually unknown frontier of modern biology, a world unto themselves. What constitutes a viral species is still unresolved, although they're obviously of enormous importance to us. But this much we can say: the variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds or is likely to exceed that in all of the rest of life combined. Nowadays, in addressing microbial biodiversity, scientists are like explorers in a rowboat launched onto the Pacific Ocean.

But that is changing rapidly with the aid of new genomic technology. Already it is possible to sequence the entire genetic code of a bacterium in under four hours. Soon we will be in a position to go forth in the field with sequencers on our backs -- to hunt bacteria in tiny crevices of the habitat's surface in the way you go watching for birds with binoculars. What will we find as we map the living world, as, finally, we get this underway seriously? As we move past the relatively gigantic mammals, birds, frogs and plants to the more elusive insects and other small invertebrates and then beyond -- to the countless millions of organisms in the invisible living world enveloped and living within humanity. Already what were thought to be bacteria for generations have been found to compose instead two great domains of microorganisms: true bacteria and one-celled organisms the archaea, which are closer than other bacteria to the eukaryota, the group that we belong to.

Some serious biologists, and I count myself among them, have begun to wonder that among the enormous and still unknown diversity of microorganisms, one might -- just might -- find aliens among them. True aliens, stocks that arrived from outer space. They've had billions of years to do it, but especially during the earliest period of biological evolution on this planet. We do know that some bacterial species that have earthly origins are capable of almost unimaginable extremes of temperature and other harsh changes in environment. Including hard radiation strong enough and maintained long enough to crack the Pyrex vessels around the growing population of bacteria. There may be a temptation to treat the biosphere holistically and the species that compose it as a great flux of entities hardly worth distinguishing one from the other. But each of these species, even the tiniest Prochlorococci, are masterpieces of evolution. Each has persisted for thousands to millions of years. Each is exquisitely adapted to the environment in which it lives, interlocked with other species to form ecosystems upon which our own lives depend in ways we have not begun even to imagine. We will destroy these ecosystems and the species composing them at the peril of our own existence -- and unfortunately we are destroying them with ingenuity and ceaseless energy.

My own epiphany as a conservationist came in 1953, while a Harvard graduate student searching for rare ants found in the mountain forests of Cuba. Ants that shine in the sunlight -- metallic green or metallic blue and one species, I discovered, metallic gold. I found my magical ants, but only after a tough climb into the mountains where the last of the native Cuban forests hung on, and were then -- and still are -- being cut back. I realized then that these species and a large part of the other unique, marvelous animals and plants on that island -- and this is true of practically every part of the world -- which took millions of years to evolve, are in the process of disappearing forever. And so it is everywhere one looks.

The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth's ancient biosphere by a combination of forces that can be summarized by the acronym "HIPPO," the animal hippo. H is for habitat destruction, including climate change forced by greenhouse gases. I is for the invasive species like the fire ants, zebra mussels, broom grasses and pathogenic bacteria and viruses that are flooding every country at an exponential rate -- that's the I. The P, the first one in "HIPPO," is for pollution. The second is for continued population, human population expansion. And the final letter is O, for over-harvesting -- driving species into extinction by excessive hunting and fishing The HIPPO juggernaut we have created, if unabated, is destined -- according to the best estimates of ongoing biodiversity research -- to reduce half of Earth's still surviving animal and plant species to extinction or critical endangerment by the end of the century. Human-forced climate change alone -- again, if unabated -- could eliminate a quarter of surviving species during the next five decades What will we and all future generations lose if much of the living environment is thus degraded? Huge potential sources of scientific information yet to be gathered, much of our environmental stability and new kinds of pharmaceuticals and new products of unimaginable strength and value -- all thrown away.

The loss will inflict a heavy price in wealth, security and yes, spirituality for all time to come. Because previous cataclysms of this kind -- the last one ended the age of dinosaurs -- take, or took, normally, five to 10 million years to repair. Sadly, our knowledge of biodiversity is so incomplete that we are at risk of losing a great deal of it before it is even discovered. For example, even in the United States, the 200,000 species known currently actually has been found to be only partial in coverage; it's mostly unknown to us in basic biology. Only about 15 percent of the known species have been studied well enough to evaluate their status. Of the 15 percent evaluated, 20 percent are classified as "in peril." That is, in danger of extinction. That's in the United States. We are, in short, flying blind into our environmental future. We urgently need to change this. We need to have the biosphere properly explored so that we can understand and competently manage it. We need to settle down before we wreck the planet. And we need that knowledge.

This should be a big science project equivalent to the Human Genome Project. It should be thought of as a biological moonshot with a timetable. So this brings me to my wish for TEDsters, and to anyone else around the world who hears this talk. I wish we would work together to help create the key tools that we need to inspire preservation of Earth's biodiversity. And let us call it the "Encyclopedia of Life." What is the "Encyclopedia of Life" -- a concept that has already taken hold and is beginning to spread and be looked at seriously? It is an encyclopedia that lives on the Internet and is contributed to by thousands of scientists around the world. Amateurs can do it also. It has an indefinitely expandable page for each species.

It makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, on demand, anywhere in the world. I've written about this idea before, and I know there are people in this room who have expended significant effort on it in the past. But what excites me is that since I first put forward this particular idea in that form, science has advanced. Technology has moved forward. Today, the practicalities of making such an encyclopedia, regardless of the magnitude of the information put into it, are within reach. Indeed, in the past year a group of influential scientific institutions have begun mobilizing to realize this dream. I wish you would help them. Working together, we can make this real.

The encyclopedia will quickly pay for itself in practical applications. It will address transcendent qualities in the human consciousness, and sense of human need. It will transform the science of biology in ways of obvious benefit to humanity. And most of all, it can inspire a new generation of biologists to continue the quest that started, for me personally, 60 years ago: To search for life, to understand it and finally -- above all -- to preserve it. That is my wish. Thank you.

http://www.ted.com/talks/e_o_wilson_on_saving_life_on_earth.html

E.O. Wilson – TED Prize wish: Help build the Encyclopedia of Life (2007) E.O. Wilson - TED-Preis-Wunsch: Helfen Sie mit, die Enzyklopädie des Lebens aufzubauen (2007) E.O. Wilson - Deseo del Premio TED: Ayude a construir la Enciclopedia de la Vida (2007) E.O. Wilson - Prix TED : Aidez à construire l'encyclopédie de la vie (2007) E.O. Wilson - Desiderio del premio TED: contribuire a costruire l'Enciclopedia della vita (2007) E.O. Wilson - Desejo do Prémio TED: Ajudar a construir a Enciclopédia da Vida (2007) Э.О. Уилсон - Желание премии TED: Помогите создать энциклопедию жизни (2007) EO Wilson - TED Ödülü dileği: Yaşam Ansiklopedisi'nin oluşturulmasına yardım edin (2007) E.O. 威尔逊--TED 奖愿望:帮助建立生命百科全书(2007 年)

I have all my life wondered what "mind-boggling" meant. Hayatım boyunca "akıl almaz"ın ne anlama geldiğini merak ettim. After two days here, I declare myself boggled, and enormously impressed, and feel that you are one of the great hopes. Burada iki gün geçirdikten sonra, kendimi şaşkın ve çok etkilenmiş ilan ediyorum ve senin en büyük umutlardan biri olduğunu hissediyorum. Not just for American achievement in science and technology, but for the whole world. Sadece Amerika'nın bilim ve teknolojideki başarısı için değil, tüm dünya için. I’ve come, however, on a special mission on behalf of my constituency. Ancak seçim bölgem adına özel bir görev için geldim. Which are the 10 to the 18th-power -- that’s a million trillion -- insects and other small creatures, and to make a plea for them. 10'un 18'inci kuvveti -- bu bir milyon trilyon -- böcekler ve diğer küçük yaratıklar ve onlar için bir ricada bulunmak. If we were to wipe out insects alone, just that group alone, on this planet -- which we are trying hard to do -- the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Если бы мы уничтожили насекомых в одиночку, только эту группу, на этой планете — что мы изо всех сил пытаемся сделать — остальная жизнь и человечество вместе с ней по большей части исчезли бы с земли. Bu gezegende tek başımıza böcekleri, yalnızca o grubu yok edecek olsaydık - ki bunu yapmaya çok çalışıyoruz - yaşamın geri kalanı ve onunla birlikte insanlık büyük ölçüde karadan yok olur. And within a few months. Ve birkaç ay içinde. Now, how did I come to this particular position of advocacy? Şimdi, bu özel savunuculuk konumuna nasıl geldim?

As a little boy, and through my teenage years, I became increasingly fascinated by the diversity of life. Küçük bir çocukken ve ergenlik yıllarım boyunca, hayatın çeşitliliği beni giderek daha fazla büyülemeye başladı. I had a butterfly period, a snake period, a bird period, a fish period, a cave period and finally and definitively, an ant period. Bir kelebek dönemim, bir yılan dönemim, bir kuş dönemim, bir balık dönemim, bir mağara dönemim ve nihayet ve kesin olarak bir karınca dönemim oldu. By my college years, I was a devoted myrmecologist, a specialist in the biology of ants. Üniversite yıllarımda, karıncaların biyolojisinde uzman olan sadık bir myrmekolog oldum. But my attention and research continued to make journeys across the great variety of life on Earth in general. Ancak dikkatim ve araştırmam, genel olarak Dünya üzerindeki çok çeşitli yaşamlar arasında yolculuklar yapmaya devam etti. Including all that it means to us as a species, how little we understand it and how pressing a danger that our activities have created for it. Bir tür olarak bizim için ne anlama geldiği, onu ne kadar az anladığımız ve faaliyetlerimizin onun için ne kadar acil bir tehlike yarattığı dahil.

Out of that broader study has emerged a concern and an ambition, crystallized in the wish that I’m about to make to you. Из этого более широкого исследования возникли беспокойство и амбиции, выкристаллизовавшиеся в желании, которое я собираюсь загадать вам. Bu daha geniş çalışmadan, size yapmak üzere olduğum dilekte kristalleşen bir endişe ve hırs ortaya çıktı. My choice is the culmination of a lifetime commitment that began with growing up on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, on the Florida peninsula. Мой выбор — это кульминация всей моей жизни, которая началась, когда я вырос на побережье Мексиканского залива в Алабаме, на полуострове Флорида. Seçimim, Florida yarımadasında, Alabama'nın Körfez Kıyısında büyümekle başlayan ömür boyu sürecek bir taahhüdün doruk noktası. As far back as I can remember, I was enchanted by the natural beauty of that region and the almost tropical exuberance of the plants and animals that grow there. Hatırlayabildiğim kadarıyla, o bölgenin doğal güzelliği ve orada yetişen bitki ve hayvanların neredeyse tropik coşkunluğu beni büyülemişti. One day when I was only seven years old and fishing, I pulled a pinfish -- they’re called, with sharp dorsal spines -- up too hard and fast. Op een dag, toen ik nog maar zeven jaar oud was en aan het vissen was, trok ik een pinfish - ze worden genoemd, met scherpe rugstekels - te hard en snel omhoog. Bir gün, sadece yedi yaşındayken, balık tutarken, çok sert ve hızlı bir şekilde yukarıya doğru keskin sırt dikenleri olan bir iğne balığı çektim. And I blinded myself in one eye. Ve kendimi bir gözümde kör ettim. I later discovered I was also hard of hearing, possibly congenitally, in the upper registers. Позже я обнаружил, что у меня также тугоухость, возможно, врожденная, в верхних регистрах. Daha sonra, muhtemelen doğuştan, üst kayıtlarda da zor işittiğimi keşfettim. So in planning to be a professional naturalist -- I never considered anything else in my entire life -- I found that I was lousy at bird watching and couldn’t track frog calls either. Итак, планируя стать профессиональным натуралистом — я никогда не думал ни о чем другом за всю свою жизнь — я обнаружил, что паршиво наблюдаю за птицами и не могу улавливать крики лягушек. Profesyonel bir doğa bilimci olmayı planlarken -- hayatım boyunca başka bir şey düşünmedim -- kuş gözlemciliği konusunda berbat olduğumu ve kurbağa seslerini de takip edemediğimi fark ettim. So I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger: the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems. Bu yüzden başparmak ve işaret parmağı arasında tutulabilen çok sayıda küçük yaratıklara döndüm: ekosistemlerimizin temelini oluşturan küçük şeyler. The little things, as I like to say, who run the world. Söylemeyi sevdiğim gibi, dünyayı yöneten küçük şeyler. In so doing, I reached a frontier of biology so strange, so rich that it seemed as though it exists on another planet. Bunu yaparken, biyolojinin o kadar garip, o kadar zengin bir sınırına ulaştım ki, sanki başka bir gezegende varmış gibi göründü. In fact, we live on a mostly unexplored planet. Aslında, çoğu keşfedilmemiş bir gezegende yaşıyoruz. The great majority of organisms on Earth remain unknown to science. Dünyadaki organizmaların büyük çoğunluğu bilim tarafından bilinmiyor.

In the last 30 years, thanks to explorations in remote parts of the world and advances in technology, biologists have, for example, added a full one-third of the known frog and other amphibian species, to bring the current total to 5,400. Son 30 yılda, dünyanın ücra köşelerindeki keşifler ve teknolojideki ilerlemeler sayesinde, örneğin, biyologlar bilinen kurbağa ve diğer amfibi türlerinin üçte birini ekleyerek mevcut toplamı 5.400'e çıkardılar. And more continue to pour in. Ve daha fazlası akmaya devam ediyor. Two new kinds of whales have been discovered, along with two new antelopes, dozens of monkey species and a new kind of elephant. İki yeni antilop, düzinelerce maymun türü ve yeni bir fil türü ile birlikte iki yeni balina türü keşfedildi. And even a distinct kind of gorilla! Ve hatta belirgin bir tür goril! At the extreme opposite end of the size scale, the class of marine bacteria, the Prochlorococci -- that will be on the final exam -- although discovered only in 1988, are now recognized as likely the most abundant organisms on Earth. Büyüklük ölçeğinin en uç ucunda, deniz bakteri sınıfı Proklorokoklar - final sınavında yer alacaklar - henüz 1988'de keşfedilmiş olmalarına rağmen, artık muhtemelen Dünya'da en çok bulunan organizmalar olarak kabul ediliyorlar. And moreover, responsible for a large part of the photosynthesis that occurs in the ocean. Üstelik okyanusta meydana gelen fotosentezin büyük bir kısmından sorumludur. These bacteria were not uncovered sooner because they are also among the smallest of all Earth’s organisms -- so minute that they cannot be seen with conventional optical microscopy. Bu bakteriler daha erken keşfedilmedi, çünkü onlar aynı zamanda Dünya'daki tüm organizmaların en küçüğü arasındalar - o kadar küçükler ki, geleneksel optik mikroskopi ile görülemezler. Yet life in the sea may depend on these tiny creatures. Ancak denizdeki yaşam bu minik canlılara bağlı olabilir.

These examples are just the first glimpse of our ignorance of life on this planet. Bu örnekler, bu gezegendeki yaşam konusundaki cehaletimizin sadece ilk belirtileri. Consider the fungi -- including mushrooms, rusts, molds and many disease-causing organisms. Mantarları, pasları, küfleri ve hastalığa neden olan birçok organizmayı düşünün. 60,000 species are known to science, but more than 1.5 million have been estimated to exist. Bilimde 60.000 tür biliniyor, ancak 1,5 milyondan fazla türün var olduğu tahmin ediliyor. Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Beschouw de nematode-rondworm, de meest voorkomende van alle dieren. Tüm hayvanlar arasında en bol bulunan nematod yuvarlak solucanını düşünün. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms -- if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms. Четверо из пяти животных на Земле являются червями-нематодами — если исключить все твердые материалы, кроме червей-нематод, вы все равно сможете увидеть призрачные очертания большинства из них в червях-нематодах. Dünyadaki beş hayvandan dördü nematod solucanlarıdır - nematod solucanları dışındaki tüm katı maddeler ortadan kaldırılsaydı, nematod solucanlarında çoğunun hayaletimsi ana hatlarını hala görebilirdiniz. About 16,000 species of nematode worms have been discovered and diagnosed by scientists; there could be hundreds of thousands of them, even millions, still unknown. Yaklaşık 16.000 nematod solucanı türü keşfedildi ve bilim adamları tarafından teşhis edildi; hala bilinmeyen yüz binlerce, hatta milyonlarca olabilir. This vast domain of hidden biodiversity is increased still further by the dark matter of the biological world of bacteria, which within just the last several years still were known from only about 6,000 species of bacteria worldwide. Bu geniş gizli biyoçeşitlilik alanı, sadece son birkaç yılda dünya çapında yalnızca yaklaşık 6.000 bakteri türünden bilinen bakterilerin biyolojik dünyasının karanlık maddesi tarafından daha da artırılmıştır. But that number of bacteria species can be found in one gram of soil, just a little handful of soil, in the 10 billion bacteria that would be there. Ancak bir gram toprakta, bir avuç toprakta, orada olması gereken 10 milyar bakteride bu sayıda bakteri türü bulunabilir. It’s been estimated that a single ton of soil -- fertile soil -- contains approximately four million species of bacteria, all unknown. Bir ton toprağın - verimli toprağın - tamamı bilinmeyen yaklaşık dört milyon bakteri türü içerdiği tahmin ediliyor.

So the question is: what are they all doing? Öyleyse soru şu: hepsi ne yapıyor? The fact is, we don’t know. Gerçek şu ki, bilmiyoruz. We are living on a planet with a lot of activities, with reference to our living environment, done by faith and guess alone. Мы живем на планете с множеством действий, связанных с нашей жизненной средой, которые выполняются только верой и догадками. Yaşadığımız çevreyle ilgili olarak, yalnızca inanç ve tahminle yapılan pek çok faaliyetin olduğu bir gezegende yaşıyoruz. Our lives depend upon these creatures. Hayatımız bu yaratıklara bağlı. To take an example close to home: there are over 500 species of bacteria now known -- friendly bacteria -- living symbiotically in your mouth and throat probably necessary to your health for holding off pathogenic bacteria. Eve yakın bir örnek verecek olursak: Şu anda bilinen 500'den fazla bakteri türü var -- dost bakteriler -- ağzınızda ve boğazınızda simbiyotik olarak yaşayan, muhtemelen sağlığınız için patojenik bakterileri uzak tutmak için gerekli.

At this point I think we have a little impressionistic film that was made especially for this occasion. Bu noktada, özellikle bu durum için yapılmış biraz izlenimci bir filmimiz olduğunu düşünüyorum. And I’d like to show it. Ve bunu göstermek istiyorum. Assisted in this by Billie Holiday. Buna Billie Holiday yardımcı oldu. (Video)

And that may be just the beginning! Ve bu sadece başlangıç olabilir! The viruses, those quasi-organisms among which are the prophasias -- the gene weavers that promote the continued evolution in the lives of the bacteria -- are a virtually unknown frontier of modern biology, a world unto themselves. Bakterilerin yaşamlarında sürekli evrimi destekleyen gen dokumacıları olan profazilerin de aralarında bulunduğu yarı organizmalar olan virüsler, modern biyolojinin neredeyse hiç bilinmeyen bir sınırı, kendi başlarına bir dünyadır. What constitutes a viral species is still unresolved, although they’re obviously of enormous importance to us. Bizim için çok büyük önem taşıdıkları açık olsa da, bir viral türü neyin oluşturduğu hala çözülememiştir. But this much we can say: the variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds or is likely to exceed that in all of the rest of life combined. Ancak şu kadarını söyleyebiliriz: Gezegendeki virüslerdeki gen çeşitliliği, yaşamın geri kalanının toplamından fazladır veya muhtemelen daha fazladır. Nowadays, in addressing microbial biodiversity, scientists are like explorers in a rowboat launched onto the Pacific Ocean. Günümüzde bilim adamları, mikrobiyal biyoçeşitliliği ele alırken, Pasifik Okyanusu'na açılan bir kayıktaki kaşifler gibidir.

But that is changing rapidly with the aid of new genomic technology. Maar dat verandert snel met behulp van nieuwe genoomtechnologie. Ancak bu, yeni genomik teknolojinin yardımıyla hızla değişiyor. Already it is possible to sequence the entire genetic code of a bacterium in under four hours. Zaten bir bakterinin tüm genetik kodunu dört saatin altında sıralamak mümkün. Soon we will be in a position to go forth in the field with sequencers on our backs -- to hunt bacteria in tiny crevices of the habitat’s surface in the way you go watching for birds with binoculars. Binnenkort zullen we in staat zijn om het veld in te gaan met sequencers op onze rug - om op bacteriën te jagen in kleine spleten van het oppervlak van de habitat zoals je met een verrekijker naar vogels kijkt. Yakında sırtımızda sıralayıcılarla tarlada ilerleyecek, dürbünle kuşları gözetler gibi habitat yüzeyindeki küçük yarıklardaki bakterileri avlayacak durumda olacağız. What will we find as we map the living world, as, finally, we get this underway seriously? Yaşayan dünyanın haritasını çıkarırken ne bulacağız, nihayet ciddi bir şekilde bu işe koyulacağız? As we move past the relatively gigantic mammals, birds, frogs and plants to the more elusive insects and other small invertebrates and then beyond -- to the countless millions of organisms in the invisible living world enveloped and living within humanity. Nispeten devasa memelileri, kuşları, kurbağaları ve bitkileri geçip daha yakalanması zor böceklere ve diğer küçük omurgasızlara ve daha sonra ötesine - insanlığın içinde yaşayan ve sarılı görünmez canlı dünyadaki sayısız milyonlarca organizmaya doğru ilerlerken. Already what were thought to be bacteria for generations have been found to compose instead two great domains of microorganisms: true bacteria and one-celled organisms the archaea, which are closer than other bacteria to the eukaryota, the group that we belong to. Nesiller boyunca bakteri olduğu düşünülen şeyin, bunun yerine iki büyük mikroorganizma alanını oluşturduğu bulundu: gerçek bakteriler ve ait olduğumuz grup olan ökaryotaya diğer bakterilerden daha yakın olan tek hücreli organizmalar, arkeler.

Some serious biologists, and I count myself among them, have begun to wonder that among the enormous and still unknown diversity of microorganisms, one might -- just might -- find aliens among them. Bazı ciddi biyologlar, kendimi onların arasında sayıyorum, mikroorganizmaların muazzam ve hala bilinmeyen çeşitliliği arasında, birinin -sadece- aralarında uzaylıların bulunabileceğini merak etmeye başladılar. True aliens, stocks that arrived from outer space. Gerçek uzaylılar, uzaydan gelen stoklar. They’ve had billions of years to do it, but especially during the earliest period of biological evolution on this planet. Bunu yapmak için milyarlarca yılları oldu, ama özellikle bu gezegendeki biyolojik evrimin en erken döneminde. We do know that some bacterial species that have earthly origins are capable of almost unimaginable extremes of temperature and other harsh changes in environment. Dünyevi kökenleri olan bazı bakteri türlerinin, neredeyse hayal edilemeyecek aşırı sıcaklıklara ve çevredeki diğer sert değişikliklere sahip olduklarını biliyoruz. Including hard radiation strong enough and maintained long enough to crack the Pyrex vessels around the growing population of bacteria. Artan bakteri popülasyonunun etrafındaki Pyrex damarlarını çatlatacak kadar güçlü ve yeterince uzun süre tutulan sert radyasyon dahil. There may be a temptation to treat the biosphere holistically and the species that compose it as a great flux of entities hardly worth distinguishing one from the other. Biyosferi bütüncül olarak ve onu oluşturan türleri birbirinden ayırmaya pek değmeyecek büyük bir varlıklar akışı olarak ele alma eğilimi olabilir. But each of these species, even the tiniest Prochlorococci, are masterpieces of evolution. Ancak bu türlerin her biri, en küçük Proklorokoklar bile, evrimin başyapıtlarıdır. Each has persisted for thousands to millions of years. Her biri binlerce ila milyonlarca yıl devam etti. Each is exquisitely adapted to the environment in which it lives, interlocked with other species to form ecosystems upon which our own lives depend in ways we have not begun even to imagine. Her biri, içinde yaşadığı çevreye mükemmel bir şekilde uyarlanmıştır, diğer türlerle iç içe geçmiştir ve kendi hayatımızın, hayal bile etmeye başlamadığımız şekillerde bağlı olduğu ekosistemler oluşturur. We will destroy these ecosystems and the species composing them at the peril of our own existence -- and unfortunately we are destroying them with ingenuity and ceaseless energy. Bu ekosistemleri ve onları oluşturan türleri kendi varlığımız pahasına yok edeceğiz ve ne yazık ki onları ustaca ve bitmeyen bir enerjiyle yok ediyoruz.

My own epiphany as a conservationist came in 1953, while a Harvard graduate student searching for rare ants found in the mountain forests of Cuba. Bir korumacı olarak benim aydınlanmam 1953'te Harvard'dan mezun bir öğrenci Küba'nın dağ ormanlarında bulunan ender karıncaları ararken geldi. Ants that shine in the sunlight -- metallic green or metallic blue and one species, I discovered, metallic gold. Güneş ışığında parıldayan karıncalar -- metalik yeşil veya metalik mavi ve keşfettiğim bir tür, metalik altın. I found my magical ants, but only after a tough climb into the mountains where the last of the native Cuban forests hung on, and were then -- and still are -- being cut back. Sihirli karıncalarımı buldum, ama ancak yerel Küba ormanlarının sonuncusunun asılı kaldığı ve o zamanlar - ve hala - kesildiği dağlara zorlu bir tırmanıştan sonra. I realized then that these species and a large part of the other unique, marvelous animals and plants on that island -- and this is true of practically every part of the world -- which took millions of years to evolve, are in the process of disappearing forever. And so it is everywhere one looks.

The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth’s ancient biosphere by a combination of forces that can be summarized by the acronym "HIPPO," the animal hippo. H is for habitat destruction, including climate change forced by greenhouse gases. I is for the invasive species like the fire ants, zebra mussels, broom grasses and pathogenic bacteria and viruses that are flooding every country at an exponential rate -- that’s the I. The P, the first one in "HIPPO," is for pollution. The second is for continued population, human population expansion. And the final letter is O, for over-harvesting -- driving species into extinction by excessive hunting and fishing The HIPPO juggernaut we have created, if unabated, is destined -- according to the best estimates of ongoing biodiversity research -- to reduce half of Earth’s still surviving animal and plant species to extinction or critical endangerment by the end of the century. Human-forced climate change alone -- again, if unabated -- could eliminate a quarter of surviving species during the next five decades What will we and all future generations lose if much of the living environment is thus degraded? Huge potential sources of scientific information yet to be gathered, much of our environmental stability and new kinds of pharmaceuticals and new products of unimaginable strength and value -- all thrown away.

The loss will inflict a heavy price in wealth, security and yes, spirituality for all time to come. Because previous cataclysms of this kind -- the last one ended the age of dinosaurs -- take, or took, normally, five to 10 million years to repair. Sadly, our knowledge of biodiversity is so incomplete that we are at risk of losing a great deal of it before it is even discovered. For example, even in the United States, the 200,000 species known currently actually has been found to be only partial in coverage; it’s mostly unknown to us in basic biology. Only about 15 percent of the known species have been studied well enough to evaluate their status. Of the 15 percent evaluated, 20 percent are classified as "in peril." That is, in danger of extinction. That’s in the United States. We are, in short, flying blind into our environmental future. We urgently need to change this. We need to have the biosphere properly explored so that we can understand and competently manage it. We need to settle down before we wreck the planet. And we need that knowledge.

This should be a big science project equivalent to the Human Genome Project. It should be thought of as a biological moonshot with a timetable. Het moet worden gezien als een biologische moonshot met een tijdschema. So this brings me to my wish for TEDsters, and to anyone else around the world who hears this talk. I wish we would work together to help create the key tools that we need to inspire preservation of Earth’s biodiversity. And let us call it the "Encyclopedia of Life." What is the "Encyclopedia of Life" -- a concept that has already taken hold and is beginning to spread and be looked at seriously? It is an encyclopedia that lives on the Internet and is contributed to by thousands of scientists around the world. Amateurs can do it also. It has an indefinitely expandable page for each species.

It makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, on demand, anywhere in the world. I’ve written about this idea before, and I know there are people in this room who have expended significant effort on it in the past. But what excites me is that since I first put forward this particular idea in that form, science has advanced. Maar wat me opwindt, is dat de wetenschap vooruit is gegaan sinds ik dit specifieke idee voor het eerst in die vorm naar voren bracht. Technology has moved forward. Today, the practicalities of making such an encyclopedia, regardless of the magnitude of the information put into it, are within reach. Indeed, in the past year a group of influential scientific institutions have begun mobilizing to realize this dream. I wish you would help them. Working together, we can make this real.

The encyclopedia will quickly pay for itself in practical applications. It will address transcendent qualities in the human consciousness, and sense of human need. It will transform the science of biology in ways of obvious benefit to humanity. And most of all, it can inspire a new generation of biologists to continue the quest that started, for me personally, 60 years ago: To search for life, to understand it and finally -- above all -- to preserve it. That is my wish. Thank you.

http://www.ted.com/talks/e_o_wilson_on_saving_life_on_earth.html