Les Kaufman Writes Article on Importance of Fish Biodiversity in Lake Victoria

Les Kaufman, a Faculty Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and a Professor in the Department of Biology, recently published an article as part of a multi-part blog series exploring biodiversity in the world’s largest tropical lake, Lake Victoria, and the critical role the lake plays in providing long-term food security for 30 million people in the region.

In the article, Prof. Kaufman explains the importance of biodiversity as a driver of ecosystem resiliency and notes the shocking rate of biodiversity loss in Lake Victoria, which has lost between a third and a half of its fish species in recent years. Prof. Kaufman specifically explores the uniqueness of little fish (haplochromine cichlids), which have evolved very rapidly and recently. He explains that there seems to be a mysterious, formative stage in evolution — which the haplochromine fishes are still in the midst of — when the creative DNA process occurs very quickly, presenting a window of opportunity to study them before they potentially go extinct. “Lake Victoria,” he says, “is a Rosetta Stone of evolutionary creation and destruction.” He explains possible reasons for the massive shifts in Lake Victoria’s fish community and water quality over the past 35 years, and stresses the importance of restoring the lake’s ecosystem health and preserving the biodiversity that remains.

Click here to read the full article.

The blog series is a product of Prof. Kaufman’s research team’s attempt to complete the first lake-wide fish biodiversity survey in Lake Victoria. The survey is being conducted by three fishery research institutes based in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania: the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI), The National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI), and the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute (TAFIRI). Denver’s Secure Fisheries, the home institution of Prof. Kaufman’s Co-PI Sarah Glaser, is the lead organization for the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that is supporting this project.