Laguna de Apoyo
A water-filled volcanic crater beside Lake Nicaragua, ~21 km² and ~175 m deep. It holds one of the youngest known cichlid radiations — an endemic flock of Amphilophus (the Apoyo 'arrow' cichlid Amphilophus zaliosus and relatives) that evolved in situ from a Midas-cichlid founder within roughly the last ten thousand years, a textbook case of sympatric speciation (Barluenga et al. 2006, Nature).
- Maximum depth
- 574 ft
- Length
- 4 miles
- Mixing regime
- Monomictic
- Basin
- Apoyo crater (endorheic), beside Lake Nicaragua
- Countries
- Nicaragua
Where every species has been recorded
9 cichlid species across 4 genera have been georeferenced in the lake, drawn from 57 field and museum records. Switch to satellite imagery, or pick a single species to see exactly where it lives.
Occurrence records: GBIF.org (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Each point is a georeferenced observation or specimen; positions carry the source dataset's own coordinate precision.
Sources
Every number on this page is traceable to peer-reviewed research.
- GBIF.org (2026). GBIF Occurrence Download — Cichlidae, African rift lakes. Global Biodiversity Information Facility, www.gbif.org. link
A shoreline of separate worlds
Laguna de Apoyo does not have one habitat but a mosaic of them, and the boundaries are sharp. A cichlid adapted to grazing algae off boulders may never cross the few metres of open sand to the next reef — which is exactly why so many species here live nowhere else on Earth.
Mapped habitats
Surveyed habitat data for this lake is not loaded yet.