Phenotypic rate and state are decoupled in response to river-to-lake transitions in cichlid fishes

Abstract

Abstract Geographic access to isolated ecosystems is an important catalyst of adaptive radiation. Cichlid fishes repeatedly colonized rift, crater, and volcanic lakes from surrounding rivers. We test the “lake effect” on the phenotypic rate and state across 253 cichlid species. The rate of evolution was consistently higher (~10-fold) in lakes, and consistent across different dimensions of the phenotype. Rate shifts tended to occur coincident with or immediately following river-to-lake transitions, generally resulting in 2- to 5-fold faster rates than in the founding riverine lineage. By contrast, river- and lake-dwelling cichlids exhibit considerable overlap in phenotypes, generally with less disparity in lakes, but often different evolutionary optima. Taken together, these results suggest that lake radiations rapidly expand into niches largely already represented by ancestral riverine lineages, albeit in different frequencies. Lakes may provide ecological opportunity via ecological release (e.g., from predators/competitors) but need not be coupled with access to novel ecological niches.