Lake Victoria cichlid fishes are excellent examples of explosive adaptive radiation. Although Lake Victoria cichlids are believed to have arisen during a short period (approximately 14,000 years), they have various species-specific phenotypes. One important phenotype that distinguishes each species is the shape of the jaw, which has diverged to adapt to the wide variety of trophic habitats pres...

We reconstruct the historical biogeography of cichlid fishes endemic to the trans-Andean region of NW South America. DNA sequences were used to study historical biogeography of the cichlid genera Andinoacara (Cichlasomatini) and Mesoheros (Heroini). Two eventbased methodological approaches, parsimony-based Statistical Dispersal-Vicariance Analysis (S-DIVA) and likelihood-based DispersalExtincti...

Cichlid fishes compose an astonishingly large number of species and formed species flocks in record-breaking time. To facilitate efficient genome scans and comparisons of cichlid genomes, we constructed a medium-density genetic linkage map of microsatellite markers of Astatotilapia burtoni. The mapping cross was derived from two inbred laboratory lines to obtain F(2) progeny by intercrossing. T...

We have found evidence for ultraviolet visual capabilities in a Lake Malawi cichlid fish, Metriaclima zebra. Microspectrophotometry of single cones revealed a visual pigment with peak sensitivity at 368+/-4 nm. M. zebra also expresses a putative ultraviolet opsin gene whose sequence is closely related to the SWS-1 opsin for other fishes. Several other African cichlids have a functional copy of ...

The coexistence of species with overlapping resource use is often thought to involve only negative fitness effects as a consequence of interspecific competition. Furthermore, the scarce empirical research on positive species interactions has predominantly focused on sessile organisms. Here, I experimentally assessed the effect of close proximity of a potential brood predator and competitor on r...

The role of hybridization in the evolution of animal species is poorly understood. Transgressive segregation is a mechanism through which hybridization can generate diversity and ultimately lead to speciation. In this report we investigated the capacity of hybridization to generate novel (transgressive) phenotypes in the taxonomically diverse cichlid fishes. We generated a large F2 hybrid popul...

Lake Tanganyika is the oldest of the Great Ancient Lakes in the East Africa. This lake harbours about 250 species of cichlid fish, which are highly diverse in terms of morphology, behaviour, and ecology. Lake Tanganyika's cichlid diversity has evolved through explosive speciation and is treated as a textbook example of adaptive radiation, the rapid differentiation of a single ancestor into an a...

East African cichlid fishes represent one of the most striking examples of rapid and convergent evolutionary radiation among vertebrates. Models of ecological speciation would suggest that functional divergence in feeding morphology has contributed to the origin and maintenance of cichlid species diversity. However, definitive evidence for the action of natural selection has been missing. Here ...

Introduced species represent one of the most serious global threats to biodiversity. In this field-based study, we assessed behavioural responses of brood tending cichlid fish to an invasive predator of their offspring. This was achieved by comparing parental defence responses of the endangered arrow cichlid (Amphilophus zaliosus), a fish species endemic to the crater lake Apoyo in Nicaragua, t...