Adaptive radiation of cichlids in the African Great Lakes
Radiación adaptativa de los cíclidos de los grandes lagos africanos
- Date
- 1972 · confidence medium
- Place
- Lake Malawi, Malawi
- Credited to
- Geoffrey Fryer and T. D. Iles
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Fryer and Iles's book gathered evidence of hundreds of cichlid species in lakes Malawi, Victoria and Tanganyika descended from a few ancestors. It is the largest known vertebrate radiation in a lake.
The key work is The Cichlid Fishes of the Great Lakes of Africa (1972); the radiation was established by work from the 1950s on. It is placed in Malawi as the most diverse lake, with some 800 species; figures vary between authors.
What it led to
- a model of rapid speciation and sexual selection
- genomic studies of cichlid radiation
- alarm over biodiversity loss after the introduction of Nile perch into Victoria