Institute of Biology, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 2, 8010 Graz, Austria.
Institute of Biology, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 2, 8010 Graz, Austria.
Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2021 Jul;160:107141. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2021.107141. Epub 2021 Mar 9.
Lates perches of the genus Lates (Latidae) are large piscivorous fishes, with a strikingly disjunct distribution range in coastal areas and estuaries of the Indo-Pacific region and in some large African freshwater systems. Previous phylogenetic hypotheses based on osteological and ontogenetic data suggested paraphyly of the African representatives, or even the small Lake Tanganyika species assemblage, with respect to the remaining Lates species. Based on a multilocus phylogeny, however, we show that extant African lates perches are monophyletic. The Nile perch, L. niloticus, which is widely distributed in the Nilo-Sudan region and Central Africa, comprises three distinct lineages and is paraphyletic with respect to the four endemic Lake Tanganyika species. We find that diversification of extant African Lates happened only as recently as the Pliocene. With the extensive, in part much older fossil record, this suggests repeated extinction and (re-)colonization of hydrological systems. We further find that Lates started to diversify in Lake Tanganyika only in the Pleistocene, which is much more recent than other fish radiations endemic to Lake Tanganyika, implying that they radiated in the presence of other top predators already in this ecosystem.
尖吻鲈属（Latidae）的晚期鲈形目鱼类是大型掠食性鱼类，其分布范围在印度洋-太平洋地区的沿海地区和河口以及一些大型非洲淡水系统中明显分离。基于骨骼和个体发生数据的先前系统发育假说表明，非洲代表种甚至是较小的坦噶尼喀湖物种组合与其余的尖吻鲈物种是并系的。然而，基于多基因座系统发育，我们表明现存的非洲尖吻鲈是单系的。广泛分布于尼罗河流域和中非地区的尼罗河鲈鱼（Lates niloticus）由三个不同的谱系组成，与四个特有坦噶尼喀湖物种相比是并系的。我们发现，现存非洲尖吻鲈的多样化仅发生在上新世。由于广泛的、部分更为古老的化石记录，这表明水文系统发生了多次灭绝和（再）殖民化。我们进一步发现，尖吻鲈仅在更新世才开始在坦噶尼喀湖多样化，这比其他特有的坦噶尼喀湖鱼类辐射要晚得多，这意味着它们在这个生态系统中已经存在其他顶级捕食者的情况下辐射。
