Lake Nicaragua
Central America's largest lake (Lago Cocibolca): roughly 8,260 km², ~160 km long and shallow — about 13 m deep on average, ~26 m at most — draining to the Caribbean through the San Juan River. A centre of Neotropical cichlid diversity, home to the Midas-cichlid complex (Amphilophus), the predatory guapotes (Parachromis), and Hypsophrys, Amatitlania and Vieja, and famous for the bull sharks and sawfish that once ran up the San Juan (Barlow 1976; Bussing 1998).
- Maximum depth
- 85 ft
- Length
- 99 miles
- Mixing regime
- Polymictic
- Basin
- San Juan basin (Caribbean drainage)
- Countries
- Nicaragua
Where every species has been recorded
19 cichlid species across 11 genera have been georeferenced in the lake, drawn from 288 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 Nicaragua 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.