Species Composition and Distribution of Freshwater Diatoms from Upper Dilimi River, Jos, Nigeria

Abstract

As component of an exhaustive investigation on the ecological studies of diatom communities of River Dilimiin Jos, the spatio-temporal variation of four different diatom communities was investigated.As a derivative of these studies, a comprehensive compilation was made of the diatomflora of the upper mainstream channel of the river. Two hundred and nine (198 pennate and 11 centric) diatom speciesbelonging to twenty five families and forty genera were recorded. The genera most represented belong to Pinnularia (26 taxa), Gomphonema (26 taxa), Cymbella (21 taxa), Navicula (19 taxa) and Eunotia (14 taxa). Gomphonema parvulum (Kutz.) Grunow, Nitzschia palea (Kütz.) Smith, Navicula arvensis and Cymbella minuta Bleisch ex Rabh Husted were the most noticeable diatoms with respect to both frequency of occurrence and relative abundance across samples.