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SUMMARY:Lake Malawi Cichlids – A Model System for Speciation Research - 
 Moritz Blumer
DTSTART:20240208T131000Z
DTEND:20240208T140000Z
UID:TALK209434@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Benjamin Shi
DESCRIPTION:Cichlid fishes from Lake Malawi are important food fishes and 
 protein sources for the local population and popular ornamental fish aroun
 d the world\, but they have also been studied by naturalists as a model sy
 stem for speciation for over a century. While there is genetic evidence fo
 r at least three human “species” (Homo sapiens\, H. neanderthalensis a
 nd H. denisova) originating in the past million years\, ongoing explosive 
 speciation in Malawi cichlids has spawned up to a thousand new species. Th
 e spectacular speciation rates in Lake Malawi cichlids are among the faste
 st ever recorded in vertebrates and gave rise to an immense variability in
  appearance and behaviour\, despite very limited genetic differentiation. 
 While some species are eight times larger than others and differ in most a
 spects of their ecology\, the distribution of genetic variation within sin
 gle species overlaps with the variation between pairs of species – meani
 ng that different taxa share most of their genetic information. In fact\, 
 captive crosses between even the most distantly related species yield fert
 ile offspring and there is evidence of extensive hybridization in the wild
 . In my talk I will give an overview of three years of PhD research\, whic
 h involved field work in Malawi and genomic analysis of thousands of whole
 -genome sequenced individuals from hundreds of species. I will focus on th
 e role of chromosomal inversions in species diversification and introduce 
 a spectacular case of repeated evolution across the lake.
LOCATION:Richard King room\, Darwin College
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