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Nilotic Lakes of the Western Rift

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The Nile

Part of the book series: Monographiae Biologicae ((MOBI,volume 89))

The nilotic lakes associated with the Western Rift are separated from the more southerly lakes Kivu and Tanganyika by the Virunga volcanoes. They include three small lakes in the Kigezi highlands, and three large lakes, George, Edward and Albert in the valley. The small lakes have poor fish faunas (mostly introduced), and have shown major changes in their zooplankton and Xenopus populations over the last sixty years.

Lake George is shallow and eutrophic, with a permanent dense phytoplank-ton dominated by Cyanobacteria, and zooplankton dominated by Thermocyclops although some Cladocera are present in smaller numbers. Lake George, in common with Lake Edward, lacks the nilotic genera Lates and Hydrocynus, but both lakes have many more species of cichlids than Lake Albert.

Lakes Edward and Albert are much deeper than Lake George, and their phyto-plankton is not dominated continuously by Cyanobacteria. The zooplankton associations in both lakes show changes between inshore and offshore, which in Lake Albert have been shown to be related to predation by inshore fishes. The littoral associations of invertebrates in these lakes are very diverse, particularly the insects, with, for instance, over 100 species of aquatic Coleoptera recorded from Lake Edward. Some aspects of these lakes have been little studied: the interstitial fauna of Lake Albert includes two species of Syncarida, but is otherwise unknown. Parasites and epibi-onts, particularly of invertebrates, are, apart from trematodes, poorly known.

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Authors
  1. Jim Green
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Henri J. Dumont

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Green, J. (2009). Nilotic Lakes of the Western Rift. In: Dumont, H.J. (eds) The Nile. Monographiae Biologicae, vol 89. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9726-3_14

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