Lake Mweru
A large, shallow lake of the Luapula–Mweru system in the Congo basin, southwest of Tanganyika: about 5,120 km² in area, 131 km long and only ~7.5 m deep on average (max ~27 m) (Bos et al. 2006). Despite its modest depth it hosts a remarkable, geologically young cichlid radiation — Meier et al. (2019) showed that hybridisation between Congolese and Bangweulu lineages, coinciding with new ecological opportunity, seeded multiple endemic radiations of Serranochromis, Orthochromis and others.
- Maximum depth
- 89 ft
- Length
- 81 miles
- Mixing regime
- Polymictic
- Basin
- Congo basin (Luapula–Mweru system)
- Countries
- Zambia; DR Congo
Where every species has been recorded
13 cichlid species across 8 genera have been georeferenced in the lake, drawn from 319 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
Lake Mweru 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.