e led some scientist lot hypothesize that Lake Victoria, at some point in time, was actually lower. Some have also concluded that most of the area that is the Lake today was dry land, but not all of it. That is the one key behind the evolution of cichlids in this lake. The massive lake that existed approximately 15,000 years ago did not disappear entirely. Many small "ponds" derived from the shrinking of the lake. When the lake shrunk, some of the vegetation and animal life were diverted throughout these different, smaller lakes. Different lakes would have different types of vegetation and animals, for obvious reasons. These life forms, no matter how complex, would essentially be forced to the ponds that formed near where they "hung out" in the big lake. One of the most "spread out" species in the big lake were the cichlids. Thus, cichlids could be found in many of the ponds. These ponds were obviously contained much less space than did the big lake, allowing for less characteristics as far as types of terrain, number of different types of organisms (which includes both predators and prey for the cichlids), and amount of space.This decrease in the number of variables that the cichlids had to deal with allowed the fish to specialize and conform with the needs of the particular pond. Konings says that an important difference is to make is between "speciation," which is the actual changing and morphing of one species to form an entirely different species and "evolution," the gradual change of genetic material (DNA) over an period of time. The cichlids of Lake Victoria today vary greatly in size, color, diet, preffered living habitat, parenting methods, breeding habits, and other characteristics. All these changes come about despite the fact that the amount of time in which cichlids experienced these changes is considered an evolutionary brief period of time by most scientists. As amazing as the changes to the Lake Victorian c...
