Assessment of macrozoobenthos baseline diversity for monitoring the ecological quality of Finima Nature Park Lake.

The scarcity of pristine, intact ecosystems limits opportunities to learn about succession and ecosystem evolution under conditions of limited human impact. Finima Nature Park (FNP) has been identified as a possible RAMSAR site. Its protected lake-"FNP Lake" (also known locally as "Bonny Lake")-is an unusual habitat that enables monitoring of aquatic ecological succession in the Niger Delta, where pristine and near-pristine ecosystems are becoming scarce. Macrozoobenthos are one of the best-known bio-monitors of ecological health integrity because they are widespread and long-lasting, with moderate mobility and high diversity, among other valuable characteristics. Monthly data of the community structure of macrozoobenthos and some of the FNP Lake's priority abiotic factors were collected in 2018, which provided a baseline for identifying future water quality changes and succession in the lake. Except for temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO), which were spatially uniform, the physico-chemical parameters varied spatio-temporally. The diversity indices values were low. According to the canonical correspondence abundance (CCA) plot, taxa distributions were influenced mainly by pH, DO, and temperature, which explains the prevalence of oxygen-insensitive species.