My newest publication just came out in Nature Communications. We shed light on how 700 diverse cichlid species could evolve in only 150,000 years in the Lake Victoria Region. By combining extensive taxon sampling and genomic analyses, we demonstrate that the entire “superflock” evolved from a hybrid swarm of two divergent cichlid lineages. The hybridization event facilitated the adaptive radiations by providing genetic variation that subsequently became recombined and sorted into many new species.

Check out the paper (open access) here: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14363