Convict cichlids, indigenous to Central America, are a common study organisms in the fields of ethology, behavioral endocrinology, and evolutionary biology. A clear understanding of their behavior within their natural environment is critical to understanding the evolutionary history of this species. Convict cichlids are monogamous bi-parental fish which live in a world of enormous predation pre...

Aggressive mimicry is an adaptive tactic of parasitic or predatory species that closely resemble inoffensive models in order to increase fitness via predatory gains. Although similarity of distantly related species is often intuitively implicated with mimicry, the exact mechanisms and evolutionary causes remain elusive in many cases. Here, we report a complex aggressive mimicry strategy in Plec...

Owing to its high degree of complexity and plasticity, the cichlid pharyngeal jaw apparatus has often been described as a key evolutionary innovation. The majority of studies investigating pharyngeal muscle behavior and function have done so in the context of feeding. Analysis of enzyme activities (citrate synthase, 3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase and L-lactate dehydrogenase) of pharyngeal musc...

An agent-based simulation has been built to model speciation in cichlid fishes in the Great Lakes of Africa. A real natural system has been chosen as the target of simulation, rather than a generalised system. This focusses research towards open problems in cichlid biology, and provides a library of field research to drive the design and parametrisation of the simulation. Visualisations of the ...

science. ice The thesis maintained in this volume is that there is no physical or mental "criminal type." The word "criminal" throughout the book is used in the sense of the legal interpretation of that word The criminal is not abnormal, ("qualitatively different") as has been formerly held, but rather is unusual ("a deviation from the normal"). Taking up the larger subdivisions to which the bo...

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 o...