The species flocks of East African cichlid fishes: recent advances in molecular phylogenetics and population genetics.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_D3D5102A2A37
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Publication sub-type
Review (review): journal as complete as possible of one specific subject, written based on exhaustive analyses from published work.
Collection
Publications
Title
The species flocks of East African cichlid fishes: recent advances in molecular phylogenetics and population genetics.
Journal
Die Naturwissenschaften
Author(s)
Salzburger W., Meyer A.
ISSN
0028-1042 (Print)
ISSN-L
0028-1042
Publication state
Published
Issued date
06/2004
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
91
Number
6
Pages
277-290
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article ; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't ; Review
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
With more than 3,000 species, the fish family Cichlidae is one of the most species-rich families of vertebrates. Cichlids occur in southern and central America, Africa, Madagascar, and India. The hotspot of their biodiversity is East Africa, where they form adaptive radiations composed of hundreds of endemic species in several lakes of various sizes and ages. The unparalleled species richness of East African cichlids has been something of a conundrum for evolutionary biologists and ecologists, since it has been in doubt whether these hundreds of species arose by allopatric speciation or whether it is necessary to invoke somewhat less traditional models of speciation, such as micro-allopatric, peripatric, or even sympatric speciation or evolution through sexual selection mediated by female choice. Ernst Mayr's analyses of these evolutionary uniquely diverse species assemblages have contributed to a more direct approach to this problem and have led to a deeper understanding of the patterns and processes that caused the formation of these huge groups of species. We review here recent molecular data on population differentiation and phylogenetics, which have helped to unravel, to some extent, the patterns and processes that led to the formation and ecological maintenance of cichlid species flocks. It is becoming apparent that sexually selected traits do play an important role in speciation in micro-allopatric or even sympatric settings. Species richness seems to be roughly correlated with the surface area, but not the age, of the lakes. We observe that the oldest lineages of a species flock of cichlids are often less species-rich and live in the open water or deepwater habitats. While the species flocks of the Lake Malawai and the Lake Victoria areas were shown to be monophyletic, the cichlid assemblage of Lake Tanganyika seems to consist of several independent species flocks. Cichlids emerge as an evolutionary model system in which many fundamental questions in evolution and ecology can be tested successfully, yet for other fish species flocks the relative importance of alternative mechanisms of speciation is likely to differ from that in cichlid fish.
Keywords
Africa, Eastern, Animals, Cichlids/classification, Cichlids/genetics, Genetics, Population/trends, Molecular Biology/trends, Phylogeny, Tropical Climate
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
19/11/2007 10:49
Last modification date
12/05/2023 15:12
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