Quote:Specialization may subdivide a single niche into many new niches. For example, cichlid fishes have diversified in East African lakes into more than 600 species. This diversification may have been possible because different fish lineages evolved to take advantage of different foods (including insects, algae, mollusks, small fish, large fish, other fishes’ scales, and even other fishes’ eyes!).
Quote:Lake Tanganyika is a rather closed system and this effect the fish fauna in at least two different ways. To begin with, it has caused a situation where a majority of the species hail from one single ancestor species who managed to get into the lake millions of years ago Secondly, it has lead to an extremely high degree of endemic species. When a new species evolve in Lake Tanganyika, it is very difficult for it to spread to other lakes and waterways. A large portion of the Lake Tanganyika cichlids are therefore endemic to the lake.
Over 200 species of cichlids have been described from Lake Tanganyika and fish experts suspect that the number will increase dramatically as the lake is more thoroughly explored by scientists. Today, several new species are found and described each year, despite the fact that large parts of Congolese and Tanzanian shore habitats are being far from methodically explored. If scientists were given a chance to survey the Congolese and Tanzania shores more systematically, the number of new discoveries each year would probably increase radically. New technology can also help us learn more about the situation in Lake Tanganyika, e.g. the advanced fishing equipment that is necessary in order to research the deeper regions of the lake.
You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.
Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.
