The Great Lakes of east Africa house what may be the richest concentration of freshwater species on earth. Most spectacular are the more than 1000 species of cichlid fishes. If a lake is despoiled, that entire fauna may be doomed. At present, the most severely threatened of all is Lake Victoria, largest lake in the tropics and second largest in the world, whose endemic fishes are now vanishing with incredible speed. The investigators will immediately initiate monitoring of the extinction process and obtain data critical to the framing of process-oriented hypotheses. The urgency and timeliness of this work can not be overstated. The biodiversity that resulted from explosive speciation within Lake Victoria is a scientific resource of immense value, let alone its importance as a source of protein for east African peoples.
