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SUMMARY:Ancient hybridization fuels rapid cichlid fish adaptive radiations
  - Steven Van Belleghem
DTSTART:20170911T150000Z
DTEND:20170911T160000Z
UID:TALK80701@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruoyun Hui
DESCRIPTION:Steven Van Belleghem will be presenting Meier et al's Ancient 
 hybridization fuels rapid cichlid fish adaptive radiations.\n\nLink\nhttps
 ://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14363\n\nAbstract\nUnderstanding why some
  evolutionary lineages generate exceptionally high species diversity is an
  important goal in evolutionary biology. Haplochromine cichlid fishes of A
 frica’s Lake Victoria region encompass >700 diverse species that all evo
 lved in the last 150\,000 years. How this ‘Lake Victoria Region Superflo
 ck’ could evolve on such rapid timescales is an enduring question. Here\
 , we demonstrate that hybridization between two divergent lineages facilit
 ated this process by providing genetic variation that subsequently became 
 recombined and sorted into many new species. Notably\, the hybridization e
 vent generated exceptional allelic variation at an opsin gene known to be 
 involved in adaptation and speciation. More generally\, differentiation be
 tween new species is accentuated around variants that were fixed differenc
 es between the parental lineages\, and that now appear in many new combina
 tions in the radiation species. We conclude that hybridization between div
 ergent lineages\, when coincident with ecological opportunity\, may facili
 tate rapid and extensive adaptive radiation.
LOCATION:Bateson Room\, Department of Genetics\, Downing Site
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