Origin of the Superflock of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa

By E. Verheyen, Walter Salzburger, J. Snoeks, Axel Meyer. Science, 2003

402 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Lake Victoria harbors a unique species-rich flock of more than 500 endemic haplochromine cichlid fishes. The origin, age, and mechanism of diversification of this extraordinary radiation are still debated. Geological evidence suggests that the lake dried out completely about 14,700 years ago. On the basis of phylogenetic analyses of almost 300 DNA sequences of the mitochondrial control region of East African cichlids, we find that the Lake Victoria cichlid flock is derived from the geologically older Lake Kivu. We suggest that the two seeding lineages may have already been lake-adapted when they colonized Lake Victoria. A haplotype analysis further shows that the most recent desiccation of Lake Victoria did not lead to a complete extinction of its endemic cichlid fauna and that the major lineage diversification took place about 100,000 years ago.

Subfields: Aquatic Science, Ecology, Environmental Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c1cdd723ddbbdbc45511caf158a6ff0e8809cea

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Ole Seehausen

Citations in the corpus

Ecology and Evolution of the African Great Lakes and Their Faunas (2014, background): “Although the initial diversification and origin of some of the major lineages within the LVRS clearly predate the Late Pleistocene desiccations (Elmer et al. 2009, Verheyen et al. 2003), the extensive drought caused severe bottlenecking (Elmer et al. 2009).”
What do we mean by 'refugia'? (2008, background): “out completely at the LGM (Stager and Johnson, 2008), and since refilling has been recolonized by cichlids that have diversified into more than 500 species (Verheyen et al., 2003).”
Phylogenetic systematics and historical biogeography of the Neotropical electric fish Gymnotus (Teleostei: Gymnotidae) (2005, background): “The role of rapid speciation and the production of adaptive radiations has received much attention by systematists working in tropical freshwaters (e.g. Meyer et al., 1990; Seehausen, 2000; Sullivan et al., 2002; Verheyen et al., 2003; Seehausen, 2002; Balirwa et al., 2003).”
Inconsistency of phylogenetic estimates from concatenated data under coalescence. (2007, background): “and Chubb, 2004; Edwards et al, 2005; McCracken and Sorensen, 2005), for fruit flies (Kopp and Barmina, 2005), and for some fish (Verheyen et al., 2003).”
Evolution of the tribe Tropheini from Lake Tanganyika: synchronized explosive speciation producing multiple evolutionary parallelism (2003, background): “flock (Sturmbauer & Meyer, 1992; Verheyen et al., 2003).”
African cichlid fish: a model system in adaptive radiation research (2006, background): “…radiation for which geological or molecular clock age estimates implicated origins within the past 300 000 years: Lake Victoria (Nagl et al. 1998, 2000; Verheyen et al. 2003), Palaeolake Makgadikgadi ( Joyce et al. 2005), Lake Natron (Seegers et al. 1999) and Lake Ejagham (Schliewen et al. 2001).”
The promise of a DNA taxonomy. (2004, neutral): “Thus a universal DNA barcode marker will not, in most cases, be able to distinguish very recently separated taxa (Verheyen et al. 2003).”