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This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Fionna Samuels.
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是费欧娜·塞缪尔。
The red wolf once roamed a huge swath of the eastern United States.
红狼曾在美国东部大片地区出没。
The historic range of these rust-colored canines stretched from Long Island across to Missouri and down to the Texas-Mexico border.
这些犬科动物呈铁锈色，历史分布范围从长岛一直延伸到密苏里州，向下一直延伸到德克萨斯州与墨西哥的边境。
But by 1972 the population was reduced to only roaming a small area along the Gulf coast due to habitat loss and hunting.
但到1972年，由于栖息地的丧失和捕猎的盛行，红狼的数量减少，它们只在墨西哥湾沿岸的一小部分地区活动。
To conserve the species, 14 individuals were captured as part of a breeding program.
为了保护该物种，捕获了14只红狼作为一项繁殖计划的一部分。
In 1980 their wild relatives were declared extinct—the captured wolves were all that was left.
1980年，它们的野生亲属宣布灭绝——只剩下捕获的这些狼了。
The species has gone through this huge bottleneck and through that lost a lot of genetic variation.
这个物种经历了巨大的瓶颈，很多遗传变异丢失了。
And now there's a fair amount of inbreeding in the species because you can't help it when you have so few founders.
如今，这个物种中有相当数量的近亲繁殖，因为当原始的数量如此之少时，无法控制这种情况。
That’s Kristin Brzeski, an assistant professor at Michigan Technological University, whose research focuses on the conservation of genetics of wild animal populations.
这是克里斯汀·布尔泽斯基，她是密歇根理工大学的助理教授，她的研究重点是野生动物种群的遗传保护。
And I think this work, is it, it's been the underdog.
我认为这项工作一直处于劣势。
It's been the underdog scientifically; it's been the underdog for conservation.
这项工作在科学方面一直处于劣势; 这项工作在保护方面也一直处于劣势。
It was, you know, all wolves were heavily persecuted, but the red wolves were heavily persecuted to the point that only 14 were left.
所有的狼群都受到了严重的迫害，红狼被严重迫害到只剩下14只。
Now, Brzeski and her collaborators have found a surprising new pool of red wolf genes that might help bring more diversity to the tiny population: "ghost" alleles in wild coyote populations.
现在，克里斯汀和她的合作对象发现了一个惊人的新红狼基因库，该基因库可能有助于为这个小种群带来更多的多样性: 野生郊狼种群中的“幽灵”等位基因。
Alleles are the parts of a chromosome that encode specific genetic traits.
等位基因是染色体上编码特定遗传特征的部分。
Just like humans, canines inherit one allele from each parent for a certain gene.
如同人类一样，犬科动物从父母双方那里都继承了一个特定基因的等位基因。
