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), ...

One of the most compelling features of the cichlid fishes of the African Great Lakes is the seemingly endless diversity of male coloration. Colour diversification has been implicated as an important factor driving cichlid speciation. Colour has also been central to cichlid taxonomy and, thus, to our concept of species diversity. We undertook a phylogeographical examination of several allopatric...

A novel testing apparatus is presented which affords the researcher maximum control over the testing environment, but allows for the scoring of actual spawning events. Female Metriaclima zebra and Metriaclima benetos chose the appropriate conspecific mate in every mating trial performed. This apparatus provides support for a critical assumption of many cichlid speciation models: that female cic...

1. The cichlid fish Metriaclima zebra, common in Lake Malawi, feeds by filtering plankton from the water and by brushing items from sediment covered substrata. It inhabits isolated rocky reefs among which community structure, resource availability and gene pools are likely to differ. We speculated that body size and trophic morphology of M. zebra might vary concomitantly. 2. We quantified the e...

background: there is much evidence indicating that natural substances from edible and medicinal plants possess powerful antioxidant and hepatoprotective activities. the objective of the present study was to investigate the potential hepatoprotective effect of silymarin in fish exposed to malathion. methods: zebra cichlid fish were allocated into five groups of which one group received normal fe...

206 Introduetion T he small rock-dwelling cichlids of Lake Malawi are colleetively known as mbuna and, until recently, were neglected by African fishermen. Currently the mbuna are classified among ten different genera in which more than 70 species have been scientifically described. More than double that number of mbuna species are still without a scientific name, most of them to be grouped in ...

Courtship and agonistic interactions in an African cichlid species present a richer diversity of acoustic stimuli than previously reported. Male cichlids, including those from the genus Pseudotropheus (P.), produce low frequency short pulsed sounds during courtship. Sounds emitted by P. zebra males in the early stages of courtship (during quiver) were found to be significantly longer and with a...

The symposium ‘‘Genomics and Vertebrate Adaptive Radiation: A Celebration of the First Cichlid Genome’’ was held at the annual meeting for the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Boston in January, 2009. While the central topic was the genomics of adaptive radiation in cichlid fishes, the symposium integrated speakers studying genotype-to-phenotype maps in other model organisms. G...