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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Quaternary ostracodes and molluscs from the Rukwa Basin (Tanzania) and their evolutionary and paleobiogeographic implications
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 392, Year 2013
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Description
Much of the spectacular biodiversity of the African Great Lakes is endemic to single lake basins so that the margins of these basins or their lakes coincide with biogeographic boundaries. Longstanding debate surrounds the evolution of these endemic species, the stability of bioprovinces, and the exchange of faunas between them over geologic time as the rift developed. Because these debates are currently unsettled, we are uncertain of how much existing distribution patterns are determined by modern hydrological barriers versus reflecting past history. This study reports on late Quaternary fossils from the Rukwa Basin and integrates geological and paleoecological data to explore faunal exchange between freshwater bioprovinces, in particular with Lake Tanganyika. Lake Rukwa's water level showed large fluctuations over the last 25. ky, and for most of this period the lake contained large habitat diversity, with different species assemblages and taphonomic controls along its northern and southern shores. Comparison of fossil and modern invertebrate assemblages suggests faunal persistence through the Last Glacial Maximum, but with an extirpation event that occurred in the last 5. ky. Some of the molluscs and ostracodes studied here are closely related to taxa (or part of clades) that are currently endemic to Lake Tanganyika, but others testify to wider and perhaps older faunal exchanges between the Rukwa bioprovince and those of Lake Malawi and the Upper Congo (in particular Lake Mweru). The Rukwa Basin has a long history of rifting and lacustrine conditions and, at least temporarily, its ecosystems appear to have functioned as satellites to Lake Tanganyika in which intralacustrine speciation occurred. Paleontological studies of the Rukwa faunas are particularly relevant because of the basin's important role in the late Cenozoic biogeography of tropical Africa, and because many of the molecular traces potentially revealing this history would have been erased in the late Holocene extirpation.© 2013 Elsevier B.V.
Authors & Co-Authors
Cohen, Andrew S.
United States, Tucson
The University of Arizona
van Bocxlaer, Bert
United States, Washington, D.c.
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Todd, Jonathan A.
United Kingdom, London
The Natural History Museum, London
McGlue, Michael Matthew
United States, Denver
United States Geological Survey Central Region
Michel, Ellinor
United Kingdom, London
The Natural History Museum, London
Nkotagu, Hudson H.
Tanzania, Dar es Salaam
University of Dar es Salaam
Grove, A. T.
United Kingdom, Cambridge
University of Cambridge
Delvaux, Damien F.
Belgium, Tervuren
Royal Museum for Central Africa
South Africa, Johannesburg
University of the Witwatersrand
Statistics
Citations: 28
Authors: 8
Affiliations: 8
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1016/j.palaeo.2013.09.007
ISSN:
00310182
Research Areas
Environmental
Study Locations
Congo
Malawi
Tanzania