Astatotilapia burtoni

Description

Astatotilapia burtoni is a species of fish in the family Cichlidae. It is found in Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia. Its natural habitats are rivers, intermittent rivers, swamps, freshwater lakes, freshwater marshes, intermittent freshwater marshes, and inland deltas. Astatotilapia burtoni has been used as a model organism to study the behaviors and physical systems of cichlids, including their development and embryogenesis. Moreover, the phylogenetic position of this particular species makes it an ideal model system for comparative genomic research. A. burtoni belongs under the haplochromines, which is the lineage of cichlids with the most species, and has been discovered to be a sister group to both the Lake Victoria region superflock (which has about 600 species) and the species flock of Lake Malawi (which has about 1,000 species).