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Updated: Nov 5, 2025

A Protocol for Laboratory Housing of Turquoise Killifish Nothobranchius furzeri
Published on: April 11, 2018
Ancestral transoceanic colonization and recent population reduction in a nonannual killifish from the Seychelles
Rongfeng Cui1,2, Alexandra M Tyers1, Zahabiya Juzar Malubhoy1
1Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, Cologne, Germany.
Abstract:
Whether freshwater fish colonize remote islands following tectonic or transoceanic dispersal remains an evolutionary puzzle. Integrating dating of known tectonic events with phylogenomics and current species distribution, we find that killifish species distribution is not explained by species dispersal by tectonic drift only. Investigating the colonization of a nonannual killifish (golden panchax, Pachypanchax playfairii) on the Seychelle islands, we found genetic support for transoceanic dispersal and experimentally discovered an adaptation to complete tolerance to seawater. At the macroevolutionary scale, despite their long-lasting isolation, nonannual golden panchax show stronger genome-wide purifying selection than annual killifishes from continental Africa. However, progressive decline in effective population size over a more recent timescale has probably led to the segregation of slightly deleterious mutations across golden panchax populations, which represents a potential threat for species preservation in the long term.
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