Origin of the Superflock of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa

Abstract

Lake Victoria harbors a unique species-rich flock of more than 500 endemic haplochromine cichlid fishes. The origin, age, and mechanism of diversification of this extraordinary radiation are still debated. Geological evidence suggests that the lake dried out completely about 14,700 years ago. On the basis of phylogenetic analyses of almost 300 DNA sequences of the mitochondrial control region of East African cichlids, we find that the Lake Victoria cichlid flock is derived from the geologically older Lake Kivu. We suggest that the two seeding lineages may have already been lake-adapted when they colonized Lake Victoria. A haplotype analysis further shows that the most recent desiccation of Lake Victoria did not lead to a complete extinction of its endemic cichlid fauna and that the major lineage diversification took place about 100,000 years ago.

The puzzling phylogeography of the haplochromine cichlid fishAstatotilapia burtoni

“…GenBank sequences from Verheyen et al. (2003) shared haplotype 9 with samples from the north/southwest, whereas sequences from Salzburger et al. (2005) shared haplotype 2 with laboratory strain samples from the University of Basel.…”

“…Similarly, the sister clade relationship between samples from Lake Cohoha (LCB) and the Ruzizi estuary (RUL) indicates human‐mediated translocation of A. burtoni from Lake Tanganyika into the Lake Cohoha system, about 135 km away from Lake Tanganyika. Note that Lake Cohoha is not connected to the Lake Tanganyika drainage but belongs to the Nile system, and native haplochromine cichlids in that area have previously been associated with the fauna of the Lake Victoria region (Verheyen et al., 2003). To our knowledge, A. burtoni was recorded in Lake Cohoha for the first time in 1993 (collectors: Snoeks, Notenbaert & Vanlishout, MRAC, Trevuren).…”

“…PCR products were purified with Exo‐SAP‐IT (USB) and Sanger‐sequenced on an ABI 3130 xl genetic analyzer using the BigDye Terminator v3.1 Cycle Sequencing Kit (Applied Biosystems). Sequences obtained in this study ( n  = 62; available at GenBank under the accession numbers MG987216–MG987279) were supplemented with available data from previous work (Salzburger et al., 2005; Theis et al., 2014; Verheyen et al., 2003), leading to a data set containing mtDNA sequence information of 428 specimens. DNA sequences were aligned using CODONCODE ALIGNER (v.3.5; CodonCode Corporation) and MAFFT (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/mafft/).…”

Molecular phylogeography of endangered sharp-snouted pitviper (Deinagkistrodon acutus; Reptilia, Viperidae) in Mainland China

“…A dense and relevant geographical sampling was designed to include individuals from most of the distribution range of the sharp-snouted pitviper, in order to comprehensively represent the inter-and intra-population variation of the species (Verheyen et al, 2003). A total of 86 specimens of D. acutus were collected from 14 sampling localities in 9 provinces of Mainland China ( Fig.…”

Genetic Diversity and Evolution of Marine Animals Isolated in Marine Lakes

“…Although most of the species are not divergent both in mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences, they are morphologically and ethologically differentiated and reproductive isolation is established (Meyer et al, 1990;Verheyen et al, 2003;Nagl et al, 1998;Terai et al, 2004). In a preliminary study, we compared some morphological characters, such as the number of spinous and soft fin ray counts and the scalation among populations in S. orbicularis but apparent differences were not found (data not shown).…”