Recent research in the African Great Lakes: fisheries, biodiversity and cichlid evolution

The East African Great Lakes are now well known for (1) theirfisheries, of vital importance for their rapidly rising riparian humanpopulations, and (2) as biodiversity hotspots with spectacular endemicfaunas, of which the flocks of cichlid fishes unique to each of the threelargest lakes, Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria, offer uniqueopportunities to investigate how new species evolve and coexist. Sincethe early 1990s research involving over a hundred scientists, financedby many international bodies, has produced numerous reports andpublications in widely scattered journals. This article summarizes theirmain discoveries and examines the status of, and prospects for, thefisheries, as well as current ideas on how their rich endemic fishfaunas have evolved. It first considers fisheries projects in each of thethree lakes: the deep rift valley lakes Tanganyika and Malawi and thehuge Victoria, all of which share their waters between several EastAfrican countries. Secondly it considers the biodiversity surveys ofeach lake, based on underwater (SCUBA) observations of fish ecologyand behaviour which have revealed threats to their fish faunas, andconsiders what conservation measures are needed. Thirdly, using thelakes as laboratories, what have the international investigations(including DNA techniques and follow-up aquarium experiments)now revealed about the origins and relationships of their cichlidspecies flocks and mechanisms of evolution