In the absence of dispersal barriers, species with great dispersal ability are expected to show little, if at all, phylogeographic structure. The East African Great Lakes and their diverse fish faunas provide opportunities to test this hypothesis in pelagic fishes, which are presumed to be highly mobile and unrestricted in their movement by physical barriers. Here, we address the link between panmixis and pelagic habitat use by comparing the phylogeographic structure among four deepwater cichlid species of the tribe Bathybatini from Lake Tanganyika. We show that the mitochondrial genealogies (based on the most variable part or the control region) of the four species are very shallow (0.8-4% intraspecific divergence across entire distribution ranges) and that all species experienced recent population growth. A lack of phylogeographic structure in the two eupelagic species, Bathybates fasciatus and B. leo, was consistent with expectations and with findings in other pelagic cichlid species. Contrary to expectations, a clear phylogeographic structure was detected in the two benthopelagic species, B. graueri and Hemibates stenosoma. Differences in genetic diversity between eupelagic and benthopelagic species may be due to differences in their dispersal propensity, mediated by their respective predatory niches, rather than precipitated by external barriers to dispersal.

Consultants in Aquatic Ecology and Engineering blattfisch e U Gabelsbergerstraße 7 4600 Wels Austria

Department of Botany and Zoology Faculty of Science Masaryk University Kotlářská 2 611 34 Brno Czech Republic

Institute of Biology University of Graz Universitätsplatz 2 8010 Graz Austria

Institute of Vertebrate Biology Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Května 8 603 65 Brno Czech Republic

Laboratory of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Genomics Department of Biology University of Leuven Ch Deberiotstraat 32 3000 Louvain Belgium

Research Group Zoology Biodiversity and Toxicology Centre for Environmental Sciences Hasselt University Agoralaan Gebouw D 3590 Diepenbeek Belgium

Zoology Unit Finnish Museum of Natural History University of Helsinki P O Box 17 00014 Helsinki Finland

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