Leaf-footed bugs choose to lose legs

If you want to meet a truly tough fish, buy a ticket to Lake Magadi, Kenya. Here, the Magadi tilapia swim happily in the hot, alkaline waters of the lake, where oxygen levels soar and plummet daily and water chemistry pushes the boundaries of acid– base regulation. Few fish can survive such an extreme aquatic environment and this has attracted comparative physiologists for decades to the town of Magadi, where tilapia are easily studied in the nearby man-made lagoon. But not all Magadi tilapia are created equal, as discovered by Canadian scientist ChrisWood and a team of international colleagues on a recent expedition to Kenya. In fact, life is even more challenging in the fast-flowing hot springs that feed into Lake Magadi’s southwestern shores. Remarkably, tilapia live here too.