Speciation in soda lake cichlids: ecological and genomic characterisation of reproductive barriers

Speciation, the formation of new species, is fundamental to understanding the
generation of biodiversity. Organisms that live in extreme environments make
excellent candidates for investigating adaptation to a changing environment.
The unprecedented stresses experienced by aquatic organisms in the last
decades make it important to determine, from an evolutionary perspective, the
mechanisms enabling some species to survive and even speciate in naturally
occurring adverse environments.
Cichlid fishes are a model system for speciation and adaptive radiation research.
In this project we focus on cichlid species that inhabit the small East African
soda lakes Natron and Magadi. These lakes are characterised by extreme aquatic
conditions of high pH (8.8-10.2), high salinity and high temperatures (30-430C).
Yet surprisingly, four closely-related soda lake cichlids thrive in these waters.
Geological evidence suggests that these species may have evolved over as short
a period of time as 10,000 years.
This project offers the novel opportunity to characterise the barriers to
reproduction that exist among the sympatric soda lake cichlid species. This
project offers high training value, combining behavioural experiments,
laboratory work, high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics with
opportunities for fieldwork in Africa for additional sample collection.