Ecology
Lake Makgadikgadi is theorized to have been the birthplace of the vast number of cichlids that once swam the Congo River, Zambezi River, Okavango River and Limpopo River - as many as 100 to 400 new species, of which approximately 25 survive today. The lake's sheer size may have provided the ancestors of these fish with an extremely wide range of new ecological niches to exploit and thus could have served as the stimulus for the evolution of the new species, which they may have done in record time before the lake drained completely. The theory further says that the new species, after having evolved within the confines of the lake, could have escaped with the lakewater as it drained, and populated the rivers of the region to evolve into the cichlids that exist today.
In current times this land is desiccated most of the year and is a seasonal wetland in the rainy summer months.
Read more about this topic: Lake Makgadikgadi
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