Darwin's Dreampond: Drama in Lake Victoria

Lake Victoria in East Africa, succinctly described by the author as a "shallow saucer filled with water, about the size of Switzerland, " is a Darwinian "dreampond" brimming with tropical life. In the 1980s, Goldschmidt, a young Dutch zoologist, was dispatched there to study its fish, specifically the amazingly diverse species of small, perchlike fishes called cichlids. The early years of the project were marked by a series of dizzying discoveries of previously unknown species of cichlid; by the mid-1980s, however, Goldschmidt and his colleagues found the species nearing mass extinction. The introduction of the voraciously predatory Nile perch eliminated 70 percent of the cichlid species by 1990. Originally published in Holland, Goldschmidt's account is vividly colored by the allure of his Tanzanian experience.