View article

The recurrent evolution of convergent forms is a widespread phenomenon in adaptive radiations (e.g., [1–9]). For example, similar ecotypes of anoles lizards have evolved on different islands of the Caribbean [2, 6], benthic-limnetic species pairs of stickleback fish emerged repeatedly in postglacial lakes [1, 3], equivalent sets of spider ecomorphs have arisen on Hawaiian islands [7, 8], and a whole set of convergent species pairs of cichlid fishes evolved in East African Lakes Malawi and Tanganyika [10, 11]. In all these cases, convergent phenotypes originated in geographic isolation from each other. Recent theoretical models, however, predict that convergence should be common within species-rich communities [12, 13], such as species assemblages resulting from adaptive radiations. Here, we present the most extensive quantitative analysis to date of an adaptive radiation of cichlid fishes, discovering multiple …