Abstract

Meiofauna abundance on sediment and mangrove roots in Buguma forest was studied for three Months between January and March, 2021. Sediment and mangrove prop roots segment samples were collected from various sites and analysed in the Laboratory following standard method of APHA. The organisms were identified up to the species level. The obtained results were subjected to descriptive inferential statistics using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. Results showed higher abundance of meiofauna on the sediment (213) than the mangrove roots (154) which belonged to two (2) phyla, five (5) families and thirteen species on both sediment and the mangrove roots. On the sediment the phylum arthropods with the class crustacean dominated (43.66%) the surface followed by the annelid (polychate) consisting of 37.56% while the polychacte having the highest composition (73.38%) followed by anthropod with crustacean consisting 18.83%. Temporally, all the species of polychaete were absent during the high tide on the sediment (station 1) in January but 3 of the species were present in the mangrove roots. Some of the species observed in this study include Nematode species, Marphysa scanguine, Sythic species, Gammarus locusta etc.  Marg alef index for the sediment surface ranged between 2.498 (station 2) and 3.052 (station 3) while that of mangrove root ranged between 2.659 (station 1) and 2.896 (station 2). Menhink indices for the surfaces varied within the same ranges. Shannon diversity index ranged between 1.988 (station 2) land 2.996 (station 3) and 2.279 (station2). Sediment meiofauna abundance was higher than the mangrove root and that the abundance is influenced by tide. It is therefore recommended that anthropogenic activities be checkmated to avoid further increase of these organisms.