[求譯] 60s science的一段話

[tonyradio (揪咪)]

求中譯：
The earth’s tropics teem with species. They’re far more biologically
diverse than the cooler parts of the planet. And scientists have credited
higher temperatures and greater amounts of sunlight. But a new study claims
that the secret to tropical biodiversity isn’t necessarily high temperatures
—it’s the steadiness of those temperatures the whole year ‘round.

When today’s biodiversity was taking shape millions of years ago, seasons as
we know them didn’t really exist. So temperatures all over the planet were
much more consistent than they are today, even in regions where the temps
were low.

Researchers looked at insect diversity today at the temperate Harvard Forest
in Massachusetts, in tropical Costa Rica and in the 53-million-year-old
McAbee fossil bed in British Columbia. Which back then was steadily
temperate. And ancient Canadian insect diversity was much more similar to
modern Costa Rica’s than to the Harvard Forest’s. The work appears in the
journal Paleobiology. [Archibald Bruce et al, http://bit.ly/chXyTE]

So we may have been thinking backwards—it’s not that the tropics have
greater biodiversity.Could be that the seasons of today’s temperate zones
have diminished the biodiversity that once flowered. And animaled.



主要就是黃色的句子



提問：

有請大大幫我翻譯~

此外我還想瞭解這句 開頭的Could be~~~這裡的文法~

我對於用could be開頭的這個非疑問句感到不解~

麻煩各位大大了!!

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◆ From: 140.112.244.238
※ 編輯: tonyradio       來自: 140.112.244.238      (07/22 00:51)
→ hoch:所以我們可能根本搞反了。並不是說熱帶地區有比較複雜的生物
→ hoch:多樣性。而是今天溫帶地區因為氣溫變化較大，減少了原本應該
→ hoch:很複雜的生物多樣性。
→ tonyradio:感謝大大!!~我瞭解了~~
推 ashurali:前一句it's not that ... 後一句(it) could be that ...
→ tonyradio:感謝樓上大大的解析!~