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Article: Bright fish + dim light = diversity lost. (turbidity causes interbreeding of cichlids in Lake Victoria, Africa)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- September 20, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Thirteen thousand years ago, Lake Victoria, now one of East Africa's great lakes, didn't exist. Since then, the basin has flooded first with water and then with an evolutionary flourish: the cichlids, a brightly colored family of perchlike fish that diversified to fill every nook in the Ireland-size pond.
As recently as 1978, researchers estimate, 500 cichlid species lived in Lake Victoria. About half are now extinct, the victims of overfishing, habitat loss, and annihilation by the Nile perch, an introduced fish whose numbers exploded in the 1980s.
A group of researchers from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands now has evidence of another ...