Unravelling the evolution of Africa’s drainage basins through a widespread freshwater fish, the African sharptooth catfish <i>Clarias gariepinus</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Aim The formation history of Africa's current river basins remains largely unknown. In order to date changes in landscape and climate, we studied the biogeography of the African freshwater fish with the largest natural distribution. We also validated biogeographical units. Location Continental Africa. Taxon Clarias gariepinus sl. Methods We investigated mitochondrial cyt b sequences of 443 individuals from 97 localities, using a haplotype network and a genetic landscape analysis. We inferred a dated phylogeny using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference approaches and reconstructed ancestral areas with S‐DEC and S‐DIVA models. Microsatellite genotyping complemented the mitochondrial approach in the Congo basin, where the latter revealed complex patterns. Results Limited differentiation is found in northern and south‐western Africa, and sharp genetic differentiation in the continent's east and centre. Populations with affinities to neighbouring basins occur at the edges of the Congo province. High diversity exists in the south of the Congo basin. The Zambezi province is partitioned into eastern, central and western sectors. In the east, specimens were related to those from the Congo. In the west, they were similar to Southern representatives. Phylogenetic inference placed the origin of C. gariepinus in the East Coast, with intraspecific diversification starting around the Great Lakes. These events occurred ca. 4.8–1.65 and 2.3–0.8 MYA respectively. Main conclusions Clades of C. gariepinus sl. show a clear geographical signature. The origin of C. gariepinus in the East Coast and diversification around the Great Lakes coincided with the periods of increased aridity. Low genetic differentiation in northern and southern Africa may result from connectivity during recent periods of higher rainfall. In contrast to other widespread African freshwater fish, colonization rather than extinction seemed to mediate distribution patterns. This can be explained by a high ecological tolerance. We highlight the species’ suitability to study landscape and climate evolution at various scales.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".