We report a negative correlation between the weight of a female convict cichlid, Cichlasoma nigrofasciatum, and the magnitude of her defence against a model brood predator for a brood reduced to 100 eggs. We account for this relationship by the fact that a larger female is more likely to spawn a larger number of eggs than is a smaller female, making a fixed number of eggs relatively less valuab...

12 benthic-limnetic axis and most populations are also color-polymorphic. The most comprehensive project focuses on the gold/dark color polymorphism in the Midas cichlid species complex (Amphilophus citrinellus spp.). Using a comparative approach that bases on extensive field collections of Midas cichlids, a substantial degree of ecological differentiation between color morphs is revealed. The ...

With an estimated 3000 species, distributed from Central and South America, across Africa to Madagascar, the Middle East, and southern India, cichlid fishes (Cichlidae) represent the most species-rich family of vertebrates. In total they account for about 10% of extant teleost diversity. Throughout their distributional range, cichlids have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity for undergoing a...

the zebra cichlid cichlasoma nigrofasciatum is a species famous for its behaviors of biparental care. this study was conducted to examine the effect of parental care and their size on the reproductive success of this fish. hatching rate (hrs) has significant difference (p

Cichlid fish inhabit a diverse range of environments that vary in the spectral content of light available for vision. These differences should result in adaptive selective pressure on the genes involved in visual sensitivity, the opsin genes. This study examines the evidence for differential adaptive molecular evolution in East African cichlid opsin genes due to gross differences in environment...

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...

Sexual selection on male coloration has been implicated in the evolution of colourful species flocks of East African cichlid fish. During adaptive radiations, animals diverge in multiple phenotypic traits, but the role of physiology has received limited attention. Here, we report how divergence in physiology may contribute to the stable coexistence of two hybridizing incipient species of cichli...

The Midas cichlid, Cichlasoma citrinellum, is a polychromatic fish that occurs in Nicaragua. All of these fish start life as normally colored, cryptic individuals. In some populations a few fish change into conspicuously colored morphs, most frequently gold. When kept in unmixed color groups, golds and normals grow at the same rate; but when they are mixed, growth of the golds becomes faster an...

The spectacular adaptive radiation of cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika encompasses extensive morphological convergence and co-occurrence of ecologically similar species, forcing a reevaluation of non-equilibrium dynamics in community assembly.