Abstract
The species flocks of cichlid fishes in the East African Great Lakes are the largest vertebrate adaptive radiations in the world and illustrious textbook examples of convergent evolution between independent species assemblages. Although recent studies suggest some degrees of genetic exchange between riverine taxa and the lake faunas, not a single cichlid species is known from Lakes Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria that is derived from the radiation associated with another of these lakes. Here, we report the discovery of a haplochromine cichlid species in Lake Tanganyika, which belongs genetically to the species flock of haplochromines of the Lake Victoria region. The new species colonized Lake Tanganyika only recently, suggesting that faunal exchange across watersheds and, hence, between isolated ichthyofaunas, is more common than previously thought.
Highlights
Adaptive radiation, the rapid evolution of novel species as a consequence of adaptation to distinct ecological niches, is thought to have played an important role in the origin of phenotypic diversity [1]
We report the discovery of a haplochromine cichlid species in Lake Tanganyika, which belongs genetically to the Lake Victoria region superflock’ (LVRS)
‘Chipwa’ formed a strongly supported clade with four taxa representing the LVRS (ML bootstrap = 100, posterior probability = 1), confirming previous results based on a large set of nuclear DNA markers [26]
Summary
The rapid evolution of novel species as a consequence of adaptation to distinct ecological niches, is thought to have played an important role in the origin of phenotypic diversity [1]. The species flocks of cichlid fishes in the African Great Lakes; Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria are the most. Lake 2 Tanganyika, the oldest lake, harbours the genetically and phenotypically most diverse cichlid assemblage comprising 12–16 ‘tribes’ [5]. The radiations in Lakes Malawi and Victoria involve only one of these tribes, the Haplochromini, making this the most species-rich cichlid lineage [4]
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