Fish Species as Eco-indicators in the Comparative Ecological Characterisation of two Creeks in the Central Niger Delta, Nigeria

P. Tamuno () and M. Smith

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2013, vol. 27, issue 7, 2645-2656

Abstract: Fish species have been used to compare the ecological characteristics of two surface waters in the same geo-ecological zones of the Central Niger Delta. The authors carried out 24 ecological expeditions along the Kolo and Otuoke Creeks in the Study Area for the purpose of comparing the ecological characteristics of these two surface waters that are in the same geo-ecological zone. Duplicate ecological surveys were conducted across three fishing seasons in the Study Area, and the traditional eco-livelihoods knowledge of experienced fishermen was explored during the survey to ensure that the surveys captured the spatial and temporal variation of fish species distribution of these creeks. The result of our study shows that there was no significant statistical ecological differences between the Kolo and Otuoke Creeks based on the following ecological indices: relative species percentage abundance; species richness; species diversity index; Shannon diversity index; and Simpson diversity index. Furthermore, the Bray-Curtis similarity index was used to demonstrate that the two surface waters were ecologically significantly similar. The implication of our findings is that the ecological attributes of surface water in the same geo-ecological zone are not significantly different in the absence of major environmental noise or human induced stress. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Eco-indicator; Fish species; Kolo creek; Otuoke creek; Ecological survey; Shannon diversity index; Simpson diversity index; Bray-curtis similarity index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-013-0308-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:27:y:2013:i:7:p:2645-2656

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-013-0308-1

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().