Aquatic Biodiversity

Biodiversity in ancient lakes

Ancient freshwater lakes are isolated aquatic islands in which a complex of ecological, genetical and evolutionary constraints have evolved extremely rich species assemblages over sometimes millions of years.

These faunas display of the highest levels of diversity known and offer unique opportunities for studying the mechanisms of evolution and speciation in situ.

Despite the fact that many species are described, the taxonomic diversity of these faunas remains insufficiently known. For example the lack of sufficient taxonomic knowledge on the fishes of the great east African lakes has important implications on the possibility to conserve and manage these fish stocks that are the main source of animal protein for millions of Africans.

Our own research on these faunas (mostly on fishes) has required the exploration of several of the largest and oldest freshwater lakes of the world; i.e. the East African lakes Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria and Lake Baikal in Siberia.

In collaboration with several partners (see project pages), we have collected extensive specimen and tissue collections with species names, ecological and locality data to address evolutionary and taxonomical questions.