Abstract
One of the most compelling features of the cichlid fishes of the African Great Lakes is the seemingly endless diversity of male coloration. Colour diversification has been implicated as an important factor driving cichlid speciation. Colour has also been central to cichlid taxonomy and, thus, to our concept of species diversity. We undertook a phylogeographical examination of several allopatric populations of the Lake Malawi cichlid Pseudotropheus zebra in order to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the populations, which exhibit one of two dorsal fin colours. We present evidence that populations with red dorsal fins (RT) are not monophyletic. The RT population defining the northern limit of the distribution has evidently originated independently of the southern RT populations, which share a common ancestry. This evidence of species-level colour convergence is an important discovery in our understanding of cichlid evolution. It implies that divergence in coloration may accompany speciation, and that allopatric populations with similar coloration cannot be assumed to be conspecific. In addition to this finding, we have observed evidence for introgression, contributing to current evidence that this phenomenon may be extremely widespread. Thus, in species-level phylogenetic reconstructions, including our own, consideration must be given to the potential effects of introgression.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (321.7 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Albertson R. C., Markert J. A., Danley P. D., Kocher T. D. Phylogeny of a rapidly evolving clade: the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi, East Africa. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1999 Apr 27;96(9):5107–5110. doi: 10.1073/pnas.96.9.5107. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Cavalli-Sforza L. L., Edwards A. W. Phylogenetic analysis. Models and estimation procedures. Am J Hum Genet. 1967 May;19(3 Pt 1):233–257. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Danley P. D., Markert J. A., Arnegard M. E., Kocher T. D. Divergence with gene flow in the rock-dwelling cichlids of Lake Malawi. Evolution. 2000 Oct;54(5):1725–1737. doi: 10.1111/j.0014-3820.2000.tb00716.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Fryer G. On the age and origin of the species flock of haplochromine cichlid fishes of Lake Victoria. Proc Biol Sci. 2001 Jun 7;268(1472):1147–1152. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2001.1601. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Kocher T. D., Conroy J. A., McKaye K. R., Stauffer J. R. Similar morphologies of cichlid fish in Lakes Tanganyika and Malawi are due to convergence. Mol Phylogenet Evol. 1993 Jun;2(2):158–165. doi: 10.1006/mpev.1993.1016. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- doi: 10.1098/rspb.1997.0248. [DOI] [PMC free article] [Google Scholar]
- doi: 10.1098/rspb.1999.0611. [DOI] [PMC free article] [Google Scholar]
- Paetkau D., Waits L. P., Clarkson P. L., Craighead L., Strobeck C. An empirical evaluation of genetic distance statistics using microsatellite data from bear (Ursidae) populations. Genetics. 1997 Dec;147(4):1943–1957. doi: 10.1093/genetics/147.4.1943. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Parker A., Kornfield I. Evolution of the mitochondrial DNA control region in the mbuna (Cichlidae) species flock of Lake Malawi, East Africa. J Mol Evol. 1997 Jul;45(1):70–83. doi: 10.1007/pl00006204. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Rico C., Turner G. F. Extreme microallopatric divergence in a cichlid species from Lake Malawi. Mol Ecol. 2002 Aug;11(8):1585–1590. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.2002.01537.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Rüber L., Meyer A., Sturmbauer C., Verheyen E. Population structure in two sympatric species of the Lake Tanganyika cichlid tribe Eretmodini: evidence for introgression. Mol Ecol. 2001 May;10(5):1207–1225. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.2001.01259.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Salzburger W., Baric S., Sturmbauer C. Speciation via introgressive hybridization in East African cichlids? Mol Ecol. 2002 Mar;11(3):619–625. doi: 10.1046/j.0962-1083.2001.01438.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Seehausen Ole. Patterns in fish radiation are compatible with Pleistocene desiccation of Lake Victoria and 14,600 year history for its cichlid species flock. Proc Biol Sci. 2002 Mar 7;269(1490):491–497. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2001.1906. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Sturmbauer C., Baric S., Salzburger W., Rüber L., Verheyen E. Lake level fluctuations synchronize genetic divergences of cichlid fishes in African lakes. Mol Biol Evol. 2001 Feb;18(2):144–154. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a003788. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Takezaki N., Nei M. Genetic distances and reconstruction of phylogenetic trees from microsatellite DNA. Genetics. 1996 Sep;144(1):389–399. doi: 10.1093/genetics/144.1.389. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Turner G. F., Seehausen O., Knight M. E., Allender C. J., Robinson R. L. How many species of cichlid fishes are there in African lakes? Mol Ecol. 2001 Mar;10(3):793–806. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.2001.01200.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- van Oppen M. J., Rico C., Deutsch J. C., Turner G. F., Hewitt G. M. Isolation and characterization of microsatellite loci in the cichlid fish Pseudotropheus zebra. Mol Ecol. 1997 Apr;6(4):387–388. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.1997.00188.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- van Oppen M. J., Rico C., Turner G. F., Hewitt G. M. Extensive homoplasy, nonstepwise mutations, and shared ancestral polymorphism at a complex microsatellite locus in Lake Malawi cichlids. Mol Biol Evol. 2000 Apr;17(4):489–498. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a026329. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]