Lake Makgadikgadi

The Makgadikgadisee is a former lake ( Paläosee ), the north of the Kalahari existed in present-day Botswana and dried up in the Holocene. In its place today are the Makgadikgadi Pans and the Okavango Delta. The lake had an average extension of about 60,000 square kilometers, so it was only a little smaller than the area of ​​today's largest lake in Africa, Lake Victoria. The Makgadikgadisee originated in the Pleistocene 315000-460000 years ago when tectonic processes sections the course of the Cuando, the upper Zambezi and the Kafue from the lower and middle Zambezi, and articulated in a basin without outflow. Climate changes caused strong changes of water level and extent of the Makgadikgadisee. At the peak of the last ice age 18,000 years ago and the lake level of Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi were 500 to 600 meters deep before, he may have been dried up. At the time of its greatest Holocene extent he was 50 feet deep. The day of lake sediments covered areas from this time for 120,000 km ². During the Holocene formed in the northeast of the lake an outflow towards middle Zambezi and the lake began to leak. Around 2000 BCE remained was the Makgadikgadi salt pans, the Lake Ngami and the Okavango Delta left as relics of the lake.

Despite its relatively short existence of the Makgadikgadisee was an important center of an Adaptive Radiation haplochrominer cichlids. A subset of these cichlids which is informally referred to as " Serranochromini ", occurs with 43 ​​% of their species in the Okavango, middle and upper Zambezi. A further 28 % live in the Upper Congo, 20 % in the upper Kasai, while in the lower Congo occur no Serranochromini. Similar distributions show up at carp fish of the genera Barbus and Labeo, in African tetras ( Alestidae ) and catfishes of the genus Chiloglanis. The distribution of species can be a speciation in Makgadikgadisee suspect.