Editor's Summary
5 May 2005
Legacy of a lake
Cichlid fish in the African Great Lakes are the most spectacular examples of explosive speciation and ecological diversification known, but these lake radiations are often seen as of little relevance to biodiversity elsewhere. Rivers in most of Africa, on the other hand, have generated very few new species because ecological opportunity in rivers is so limited. Paradoxically, rivers in southwest Africa teem with cichlid species. These river fish are now shown to be the remnants of a species flock that emerged during an adaptive radiation in a large lake in Botswana that dried up 2,000 years ago. Here at least, rapid evolution in a geographically restricted area has provided a window of ecological opportunity that has helped to shape continental biodiversity.
News and Views: Evolutionary biology: Ghost of speciation past
Lurking in the rivers of Botswana are the remnants of a diverse flock of cichlid fishes, whose origins can be traced to a lake that vanished more than 2,000 years ago.
Thomas D. Kocher
doi: 10.1038/435029a
Letter: An extant cichlid fish radiation emerged in an extinct Pleistocene lake
Domino A. Joyce, David H. Lunt, Roger Bills, George F. Turner, Cyprian Katongo, Nina Duftner, Christian Sturmbauer and Ole Seehausen
doi: 10.1038/nature03489
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (387K) | Supplementary information
