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Baikal pictures for the phone interview with UW-W
The purpose of this page is to give a few examples of the unique endemic fauna of Lake Baikal in Siberia - the oldest and the deepest lake in the world that contains 20% of world's surface liquid fresh water. Baikal area has recently been designated as a UNESCO
World Heritage Area.
Baikal is teaming with life, most of which is endemic to the lake. Baikal species flock of gammarids (
Crustacea: Amphipoda ) consists of 250+ species, which is more that 75% of all freshwater gammarids.
This is what a typical
Baikal sponges habitat
looks like. The sponges belong to a species flock with unknown origins, they are not related to any other fresh-water sponges. Their symbiotic algae are chief primary producers in very oligotrophic waters of Baikal.
A lot of species of fish and gammarids are closely associated with the sponges: this
picture shows a sculpin (one of 40 some endemic species) and gammarid Spinacanthus parasiticus (one of over 250 endemic species) on a sponge Lubomiskiya (one of about 12 endemic species). (C) National Geographic, 1992.
Just to give you an idea of what the diversity of Baikal gammarids look like:
this is a typical sample scooped out of the lake: 6 or 7 different species of all kinds of sizes, shapes and ecology
Many Baikal gammarids, like this
Acanthogammarus sp. are huge and spiny, resembling (superficially) marine amphipods.
Some species,
like these two , ventured into previously unoccupied abyssal (top) and pelagic (bottom) niches, as did this pelagic sculpin called
golomyanka.
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(Cyrillics is in KOI8)
Many thanks to L.M.m.b. for the design assistance.
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