Visual Tuning May Boost African Cichlid Diversity
نویسندگان
چکیده
منابع مشابه
Visual Tuning May Boost African Cichlid Diversity
African cichlid fish form new species faster than any other vertebrates, with hundreds of species evolving within the last 2 million years in Lake Malawi and within the last 120,000 years in Lake Victoria. This rapid speciation makes cichlids good models for elucidating the genetic mechanisms behind biodiversity. Vision may play a key role in cichlid evolution, adapting them to forage for new f...
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The flocks of cichlid fishes in the African Great Lakes are a fascinating system for studies of visual ecology. Separate radiations have produced a diverse flock of several hundred closely related cichlid species in each of the three large lakes (Malawi, Tanganyika and Victoria). Closely related species exhibit a diverse range of color patterns. The three lakes have dramatically different photi...
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Hundreds of species of cichlid fishes have evolved in the Great Lakes of Africa. These colorful fishes are known for their ecological diversity. Here, we discuss the diversity of their visual systems. Cichlids have seven unique cone opsin genes, which produce visual pigments sensitive from the ultraviolet to the red end of the spectrum. Different species typically express three visual pigments ...
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The mechanisms underlying natural phenotypic diversity are key to understanding evolution and speciation. Cichlid fishes are among the most speciose vertebrates and an ideal model for identifying genes controlling species differences. Cichlids have diverse visual sensitivities that result from species expressing subsets of seven cichlid cone opsin genes. We previously identified a quantitative ...
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Spectral tuning of visual pigments is typically accomplished through changes in opsin amino acid sequence. Within a given opsin class, changes at a few key sites control wavelength specificity. To investigate known differences in the visual pigment spectral sensitivity of the Lake Malawi cichlids, Metriaclima zebra (368, 488, and 533 nm) and Dimidiochromis compressiceps (447, 536, and 569 nm), ...
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: PLoS Biology
سال: 2009
ISSN: 1545-7885
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000267