The Freshwater Biology Section, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Vautierstraat 29, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.
Trends Ecol Evol. 1997 May;12(5):177-82. doi: 10.1016/s0169-5347(97)01039-2.
About a dozen lakes in the world are up to three orders of magnitude older than most others. Lakes Tanganyika (East Africa) and Baikal (Siberia) have probably existed in some form for 12-20 million years, maybe more. Such lakes can have different origins, sizes, shapes, depths and limnologies, but, in contrast to short-lived (mostly post-glacial) lakes, they have exceptionally high faunal diversity and levels of endemicity. A multitude of and processes accounting for these explosive radiations have recently been documented, most of them based on particular groups in certain lakes, but comparative research can detect repeated patterns. No special speciafion mechanism, exclusive to ancient lakes has been demonstrated, although cases of ultra-rapid speciation have been documented. Extant diversity results not by simple accumulation, but by a complex process of immigration, speciation and extinction.
世界上大约有十几个湖泊比大多数其他湖泊古老了一到两个数量级。坦噶尼喀湖（东非）和贝加尔湖（西伯利亚）可能已经存在了 1200 万到 2000 万年，甚至更久。这些湖泊可能有不同的起源、大小、形状、深度和水文学特征，但与短暂存在的（主要是后冰川期）湖泊相比，它们具有异常高的动物多样性和特有性水平。最近已经记录了许多导致这些爆发性辐射的过程，其中大多数基于特定湖泊中的特定群体，但比较研究可以发现重复的模式。尽管已经记录了一些超快速物种形成的案例，但还没有证明专门针对古老湖泊的特殊speciafion 机制。现存的多样性不是通过简单的积累产生的，而是通过一个复杂的移民、物种形成和灭绝过程产生的。
