'From Lake Nyasa'

The beasties to the left are specimens from various species of Cichlids (family Cichlidae). There's a general review of their significance at the Smithsonian's/FONZ site (and many others around the web, if you're up to googling for them). I shot these through an aquarium wall with a mini-DV camera, at the Metro Toronto Zoo, yesterday, while strolling through with my lovely wife and our little one on our jaunt to that city this weekend.

The Cichlids of the African great lakes, to precis what you might find elsewhere on the web, are significant as a 'species flock' of extraordinary size and diversity. This is a parallel phenomenon to the Darwin's (Galapagos) finches which are known to have (in part) inspired Darwin's theory of natural section--like the Galapagos finches, the Malawi Cichlids are a group of relatively closely related species which have radiated successfully into a wide range of niches.

The difference is in the number of species that occur in the flock--in the case of the Cichlids, there are known to be more than 1,000 species in Lake Malawi alone--a few orders of magnitude more species than occur in the 'Darwin's finches' species flock, of 13 species, give or take.

The Metro Zoo's Cichlid tank, for its part, is pretty impressive on its own. Kinda a 'wall'o'fish' thing--designed, one would presume, as an illustration of extraordinary diversity. Rather purty.