Recent rapid radiation of apex predators suggests dramatic biodiversity turnover in an ancient lake.

ABSTRACT: Top predators have oversized influence on food webs and ecosystem dynamics, and introducing a novel predator to a naive environment can have dramatic consequences for endemic biodiversity. Using genomic data, we find that the colonization of Lake Tanganyika by Lates fishes-the top predators in this ancient lake-occurred more recently than other diverse clades within the lake. Diversification into four endemic Lates species occurred within the lake during a time of dramatic changes in lake levels driven by glacial-interglacial cycles, supporting the hypothesis that these fluctuations were a "species pump" for lacustrine taxa. These lake level fluctuations also likely contributed to multiple admixture events among Lates species during the Pleistocene (~90-500 Kya). Toget

SUBMITTER: Rick JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11761459 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature