Cichlids are one of the largest and strangest groups of vertebrate fish — fish with backbones — on Earth. They’re popular as pets and farmed in aquaculture, and scientists have been studying them ...

Some animal parents go to extraordinary lengths to shield their young from predators, disease, and dangerous currents.

Most fish rely primarily on their vision to find prey to feed upon, but a University of Rhode Island biologist and her colleagues have demonstrated that a group of African cichlids feeds by using its ...

There are concerned, overprotective parents, and then there are cichlid fish. After a male cichlid fertilizes the female’s eggs, she holds her entire brood of embryos inside her mouth for two weeks ...

Raising babies can be exhausting—so much so that some mouthbrooding mothers snack on their young, according to a new study. A central African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni—commonly called Burton ...

Gene transfer inhibition in the African cichlids fish might explain the evolution of new species, a study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, has found. Martin Genner, a professor of Ecology, Population ...

Variations in water quality can impact the development of the visual system of one species of African fish, suggests a new study. The research, led by Jai Tiarks, a recent graduate alum in environment ...

Lake Tanganyika in Africa is a true hotspot of organismal diversity. Approximately 240 species of cichlid fishes have evolved in this lake in less than 10 million years. A research team from the ...

Sex-determining systems may evolve rapidly and contribute to lineage diversification. In fact, recent work has suggested an integral role of sex chromosome evolution in models of speciation. We use ...

Africa's Lake Victoria is home to one of evolution's greatest experiments. In its waters, what began as a single lineage belonging to the cichlid family of fishes has since given rise to a dazzling ...