Effects of urban-agricultural land-use on Afrotropical macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups in selected rivers in the Niger Delta Region, Nigeria

Anthropogenic pollution from urban and agricultural activities continually affects freshwater ecosystems in Africa, adversely affecting water quality and biodiversity. In this study, we explored the responses of macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups (FFGs) to an urban-agricultural disturbance in the Niger Delta Region, aiming to examine their utility for long-term monitoring of urban-agricultural disturbance in the region. We sampled 17 sites in 11 rivers between 2008 and 2012. We classified the sites into urban, agricultural, and reference (control) sites based on the watershed land-uses and reach-scale anthropogenic disturbance. Permutational multivariate analysis of variance showed that physical and chemical variables differed significantly between the site groups ( P