Expanding the Blue Economy in East and Southern Africa – Episode 26. In this month’s episode, we celebrate World Environment Day. Marie Haga, AVP for IFAD, and Jo Puri, Director of IFAD’s ECG Division, talk about how IFAD balances supporting development with protecting the environment.
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Research on Lake Victoria Cichlids Uncovers Processes of Rapid Species Adaptation
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have recently published the results of their investigations into adaptive radiation, which is when organisms rapidly evolve from an ancestral species into novel forms. Their genetic analyses of cichlids in Lake Victoria highlight several candidate genes that may drive adaptive radiation and provide evidence for decisive selective events that cause particular genetic variants to quickly gain dominance within populations. These findings broaden scientific understanding of how new species arise.
Biologists use the term adaptive radiation to describe a phenomenon in which new species rapidly evolve from an ancestral species, often in response to changes in the local environment that lead to new biological niches becoming available. To understand this process, biologists often turn to the cichlids of Lake Victoria, in which over 500 specie
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Biologists use the term adaptive radiation to describe a phenomenon in which new species rapidly evolve from an ancestral species, often in response to changes in the local environment that lead to new biological niches becoming available. To understand this process, biologists often turn to the cichlids of Lake Victoria, in which over 500 species of the fish have evolved over the past 14,600 years. As Professor Masato Nikaido of Tokyo Tech explains, “The level of genetic differentiation among species is considered very low due to the short period of time after these different species began evolving, and this limited genetic differentiation provides us with a great opportunity to find candidate genes that have contributed to adaptive radiation and the evolution of new species.”
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IMAGE: Comparison of genomes of three species of Lake Victoria cichlids including Haplochromis chilotes, H. sauvagei, and Lithochromis rufus revealed signs of what biologists call selective sweep events , in which selective. view more
Credit: Tokyo Tech
Biologists use the term adaptive radiation to describe a phenomenon in which new species rapidly evolve from an ancestral species, often in response to changes in the local environment that lead to new biological niches becoming available. To understand this process, biologists often turn to the cichlids of Lake Victoria, in which over 500 species of the fish have evolved over the past 14,600 years. As Professor Masato Nikaido of Tokyo Tech explains, The level of genetic differentiation among species is considered very low due to the short period of time after these different species began evolving, and this limited genetic differentiation provides us with a great opportunity to find candidate genes that hav