Lake Nyasa: Home to 15 percent of all freshwater fish species
An overview of biodiversity in East Africa's Lake Nyasa (also called Lake Malawi or Lago Niassa), particularly with respect to cichlid fishes.
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Transcript
Lake Nyasa is home to about 15% of all freshwater fish species on Earth.
Lake Nyasa is a long, thin, deep lake that stretches more than 350 miles through eastern Africa.
The length, depth, and temperatures of Lake Nyasa create a number of radically different microhabitats.
For this reason Lake Nyasa has a very high level of biodiversity.
As many as 1,000 species of fish have been recorded in the lake. Many of those species belong to the cichlid family.
The cichlids of Lake Nyasa evolved from a few species that probably entered the lake about 3 million years ago.
Now there are more than 500 species in the lake, with a wide array of colors and anatomical adaptation for different habitats, food sources, and breeding behaviors.
The diversity of cichlids especially in lakes like Nyasa—especially in lakes like Nyasa—has been compared to the diversity of the finches observed by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, which helped him formulate his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Lake Nyasa is a long, thin, deep lake that stretches more than 350 miles through eastern Africa.
The length, depth, and temperatures of Lake Nyasa create a number of radically different microhabitats.
For this reason Lake Nyasa has a very high level of biodiversity.
As many as 1,000 species of fish have been recorded in the lake. Many of those species belong to the cichlid family.
The cichlids of Lake Nyasa evolved from a few species that probably entered the lake about 3 million years ago.
Now there are more than 500 species in the lake, with a wide array of colors and anatomical adaptation for different habitats, food sources, and breeding behaviors.
The diversity of cichlids especially in lakes like Nyasa—especially in lakes like Nyasa—has been compared to the diversity of the finches observed by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, which helped him formulate his theory of evolution by natural selection.