Environmental change explains cichlid adaptive radiation at Lake Malawi over the past 1.2 million years.

ABSTRACT: Long paleoecological records are critical for understanding evolutionary responses to environmental forcing and unparalleled tools for elucidating the mechanisms that lead to the development of regions of high biodiversity. We use a 1.2-My record from Lake Malawi, a textbook example of biological diversification, to document how climate and tectonics have driven ecosystem and evolutionary dynamics. Before ∼800 ka, Lake Malawi was much shallower than today, with higher frequency but much lower amplitude water-level and oxygenation changes. Since ∼800 ka, the lake has experienced much larger environmental fluctuations, best explained by a punctuated, tectonically driven rise in its outlet location and level. Following the reorganization of the basin, a change in the pacing of hydroclimate va

SUBMITTER: Ivory SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5081594 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature