eddy@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Sean Eddy) (10/17/87)
Walter Shearer wrote a letter to Nature (328: 299, 1987)
last July posed an interesting question: what happened to
the fish population of Lake Nyos, the lake in Cameroon
which emitted some gas that killed many people in August 1986?
Volcanic crater lakes are an important study area for
evolutionary biologists; the question of how a fish population
is first established there is an interesting one. Shearer
pointed out many interesting things that could be learned
from the fish population of Lake Nyos.
Some poor soul ventured to Lake Nyos to study the fish, following
Shearer's advice. Somewhat disgruntled, he writes in this week's Nature:
"...the simple answer to Shearer's question 'what happened to
the fish that were living in Lake Nyos?', is that there were no fish."
- Sean Eddy
- MCD Biology; U. of Colorado at Boulder; Boulder CO 80309
- eddy@boulder.colorado.EDU !{hao,nbires}!boulder!eddy
-
- "A lack of unity and coherence [in a scientist's world view] frequently
- results in anxiety and schizophrenia." - Francois Jacob