Widespread Genetic Signals of Visual System Adaptation in Deepwater Cichlid Fishes

Acknowledgements: This study was financially supported by a grant from the Flemish University Research Fund (BOF) and through grant G047521N from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) awarded to H.S. We thank the Department of Fisheries of the Government of Malawi for facilitating Malawi cichlid specimen collection and George Turner for support with taxonomic assignment of the samples. We are also grateful to Bettina Fischer for lab support with RNA extractions, to Graham Sellers for valuable input and discussions on the differential gene expression analysis, and to Fabrizia Ronco for advice on phylogenetic signal analysis. Finally, we thank Karen Carleton for her early suggestions during email exchanges, which helped shape some of the ideas later presented in the discussion.