Ancient hybridization fuels rapid cichlid fish adaptive radiations

Meier, Joana; Marques, David Alexander; Mwaiko, Salome; Wagner, Catherine; Excoffier, Laurent; Seehausen, Ole (2017). Ancient hybridization fuels rapid cichlid fish adaptive radiations. Nature communications, 8(14363), p. 14363. Nature Publishing Group 10.1038/ncomms14363

Preview

Text Meier et al. 2017 Nature Communications.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (824kB) | Preview

Understanding why some evolutionary lineages generate exceptionally high species diversity is an important goal in evolutionary biology. Haplochromine cichlid fishes of Africa’s Lake Victoria region encompass 4700 diverse species that all evolved in the last 150,000 years. How this ‘Lake Victoria Region Superflock’ could evolve on such rapid timescales is an enduring question. Here, we demonstrate that hybridization between two divergent lineages facilitated this process by providing genetic variation that subsequently became recombined and sorted into many new species. Notably, the hybridization event generated exceptional allelic variation at an opsin gene known to be involved in adaptation and speciation. More generally, differentiation between new species is accentuated around variants that were fixed differences between the parental lineages, and that now appear in many new combinations in the radiation species. We conclude that hybridization between divergent lineages, when coincident with ecological opportunity, may facilitate rapid and extensive adaptive radiation.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

237 since deposited on 19 Jul 2017
23 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item