The Role of Parasitism in Adaptive Radiations—When Might Parasites Promote and When Might They Constrain Ecological Speciation?

Figure 5

Left: the cichlid fish sister species Pundamilia pundamilia and P. nyererei from Lake Victoria differ in their parasite assemblages, dominated by larval nematodes in the internal organs and ectoparasitic copepods on the gills, respectively (photo of P. pundamilia Ole Seehausen, photo of P. nyererei courtesy of Martine Maan, drawings courtesy of Jeanette Bieman). Right: males with bright red (shown) or bright blue (not shown) colouration and males with larger territories were found to carry lower parasite infections than males with duller coloration [66, 101] and females use male nuptial colouration in intra- and interspecific mate choice [102, 103]. Figure reproduced with permission from Maan et al. [101].