Evolutionary innovations, traits that give species access to previously unoccupied niches, may promote speciation and adaptive radiation. Here, we show that such innovations can also result in competitive inferiority and extinction. We present evidence that the modified pharyngeal jaws of cichlid fishes and several marine fish lineages, a classic example of evolutionary innovation, are not univ...

To appreciate better how cichlids segregate along the trophic, spatial and temporal dimensions, it is necessary to understand the cichlids’ body design, and its role in resource partitioning.We investigatedbody shape variation, quantiŽ ed using landmark-basedgeometricmorphometrics, among cichlid species belonging to algal and zooplankton feeders coexisting along the rocky shores of Lake Malawi,...

The cichlid fishes in the East African Great Lakes are a prime model system for the study of adaptive radiation. Therefore, the availability of an elaborate phylogenetic framework is an important prerequisite. Previous phylogenetic hypotheses on East African cichlids are mainly based on mitochondrial and/or fragment-based markers, and, to date, no taxon-rich phylogeny exists that is based on mu...

Abstract Female cichlid fish living in African great lakes are known to have sensory systems that adapted ambient light environments. These system adaptations hypothesized influenced the evolution of diverse male nuptial coloration. In rock-dwelling Lake Malawi mbuna cichlids, however, extent which environments influence female and potentially associated coloration remains unknown. Yet, ubiquit...

The opening stages of speciation remain poorly understood, especially from a genomic perspective. The genomes of newly discovered crater-lake cichlid fish shed light on the early phases of diversification and suggest that selection acts on multiple genomic regions.

1 T explosive speciation of cichlid fishes in the African great lakes has intrigued biologists for many decades. Interest was revitalized in 1996 after the publication in Science of geological data1 indicating that the youngest lake, Lake Victoria, must have been completely dry during the most recent Ice Age – perhaps as recently as 12 400 years ago. This implies that the approximately 500 hapl...

The existence of ancient deep-water lakes provides an opportunity to study the independent adaptation of aquatic organisms to pelagic, benthic, and rocky shore habitats. With improving resolution of their phylogenetic relationships, the many cichlid fish species endemic to the African Great Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria provide a significant resource for the comparative study of such e...

Antisymmetry in the direction of the mouth opening, to either the right ("lefty") or left ("righty"), was documented in the scale-eating cichlid Perissodus microlepis. This study revealed the presence of lefty and righty mouth morphs in the herbivorous cichlid Neolamprologus moorii, although the degree of deviation was not large. Both species are biparental brooders and guard their young. We ex...