Evolution in African Rift Lake Cichlidae

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The East African Rift Valley Lakes are remarkable for the large number of unique cichlid fish species which they contain. Lake Malawi, with over 250 species of endemic cichlids, has more species of fish than any other lake in the world. To better understand the evolutionary mechanisms which produced these many species, portions of the mitochondrial DNA of these fish will be sequenced. The sequences will then be used to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships among the cichlid fish in Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika and Victoria. These studies will have an important impact on ecological and evolutionary studies of these fish. A clear phylogenetic hypothesis for the taxa will allow inference of the morphological, ecological and behavioral characteristics of ancestral species, which is important to our understanding of how these species flocks arose.