Abstract
THE aquatic faunas of the great lakes of Central Africa, although like so many other features of the dark continent still largely unexplored, have attracted a good deal of attention during the last few years. It has been ascertained that some of these great sheets of water, although physiographically apparently so similar, are absolutely unlike each other in respect to the aquatic animals they contain. Thus the fishes and molluscs of Nyasa, which have been up to the present time by far the most completely known, show no forms which have deviated widely from easily recognisable freshwater stocks, or that suggest that Nyasa has at any past time been more directly connected with the sea. On the other hand, one of the first items of zoological information which reached Europe concerning Tanganyika, was the discovery of a Craspidote medusa by Boehm in 1893. The mere existence of fresh-water medusæ is such a rare and remarkable occurrence, that scientific interest became at once turned towards the Tanganyika fauna as a whole, and a re-examination of the shells of the molluscs of the lake, which had been brought home by various travellers, showed that the medusa was only one member of a remarkable fauna, many of the forms of which were as singular and marine-looking as the jelly-fish itself. Up to the present time, however, the real nature of this remarkable assemblage of lake animals has of necessity remained entirely problematical, since, without more material, it was impossible to attempt to determine whether the close similarity, which some of the gastropod shells exhibit to species living elsewhere in the ocean, was due to actual affinity, or was brought about by a convergence of variations induced somehow in an originally fresh-water stock. To obtain the material sufficient to throw light on these forms, by a determination of their actual affinities, was the object of an expedition to Tanganyika, which, through the generosity of the Royal Society and British Association, I was able to undertake nearly two years ago.
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MOORE, J. The Fresh-Water Fauna of Lake Tanganyika. Nature 56, 198–200 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/056198c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/056198c0
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