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The meek may not just inherit the Earth, they could help keep the planet cool.
谦卑之人不仅能够赢得天下，而且还可以帮助这颗星球降温。
The meek in this case being ants.
这里的谦卑之人指的是蚂蚁。
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.
亚利桑那州立大学地理学家罗纳德·朵恩和他的学生们25年来一直从事蚂蚁，白蚁及树根对岩石风化影响的研究。
Rocks like plagioclase and olivine that contain calcium and magnesium naturally absorb carbon dioxide to become limestone or dolomite.
比如含有钙和镁的斜长石和橄榄石可以自然吸收二氧化碳转变成石灰岩和白云石。
The more rock that’s exposed, the more CO2 gets trapped.
暴露的岩石越多，吸收的二氧化碳就越多。
And ants apparently greatly speed up that process.
而明显的是，正是蚂蚁大大加速了这一进程。
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.
在亚利桑那州和德克萨斯州的6个实验场所，朵恩的团队发现8种不同类型的蚂蚁可以加速对空气中二氧化碳的吸收，而且是没有蚂蚁地方的约335倍。
The research is in the journal Geology.
这项研究已经在《地质学》杂志上发表。
Exactly how ants enhance this carbon dioxide trapping remains unclear.
目前仍不清楚蚂蚁是如何具体加速二氧化碳吸收。
The activity could even be due not to the ants, but to the microbes they carry.
但这一加速过程甚至可能不是出于蚂蚁自身，而是因为它们所携带的微生物所致。
Regardless, there are a lot of ants on Earth, as many as 10 trillion individuals by one estimate.
无论如何，在地球上有很多蚂蚁，据估计大约有10万亿多。
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.
朵恩甚至推测大约6600万年前蚂蚁的增殖可能就是导致最近，新生代气候形成的原因，直到最近比早先时代的气温低很多。
Aesop gave ants a reputation for being hard workers.
作家伊索盛赞蚂蚁是辛勤的工人。
A lot of that effort may have been for a moderate climate's benefit.
而它们的辛勤付出可能会有益于温和气候的形成。
