Management of aquatic plants and their contributions to fisheries production in Ikere-Gorge, Iseyin, Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Aquatic plants are important in freshwater ecosystems. They provide food, shelter, spawning and nursery grounds for fish. They are usually found  at the littoral parts of freshwater ecosystems. The abundance, distribution and diversity of aquatic plant of Ikere-gorge, Iseyin, Nigeria were  examined between January 2017 and December 2018. There are twelve fishing villages in Ikere-gorge and four villages were randomly selected. Aquatic plants were sampled and collected with the help of hired fishermen. The collected aquatic plant samples were identified at the Forest  Herbarium of the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria with appropriate keys. This work identified 13 families and 23 species of aquatic plants.  Cyperaceae family recorded the highest (4) number of individual species while Salvinia molesta had the highest abundance in all the sampling sites. The ecological classification of the aquatic plants showed that 14 species are emergent; 7 species floating and 3 species submerged. Site C had the most abundance (9220) of aquatic plants, followed by site D (8490), site B (8130) and site A (7940). The gamma (γ) and beta (β) diversities were 23 and 0.01 respectively. The alpha (α) diversity included Dominance (0.08), Simpson (0.92) and Shannon-Wiener (2.72) respectively. These results show that Salvinia molesta and Najas guadalupensis are the most and least abundant aquatic plants in Ikere-gorge respectively; which may be due to  their ecological status. Moreover, management of aquatic plants is an integral part of fisheries management for sustainable fisheries. Therefore, their management is essential for the maintenance of aquatic biodiversity.

Key words: aquatic plants, diversity, emergent, floating, submerged