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ABSTRACT
Amphibians have crucial roles as predators and prey, seed dispersers, nutrient recyclers in numerous ecosystems and also ensure ecosystem balance by being a significant part of food chains and food webs. This study was aimed at determining the current status of amphibian biodiversity and threats of anthropogenic activities on wildlife amphibians in six selected faculties in the University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria. Specimens were collected using the visualacoustic sampling technique. Specimens were identified using taxonomic characters peculiar to each species. Species richness, diversity and evenness were calculated using the Margalef's index, Shannon diversity and evenness index respectively. A total of 136 specimens were gotten, which included 4 Families, 5 Genera and 8 Species. Species recorded according to their abundance include Sclerophys maculatus (58.82%) which was the most abundant species followed by Hoplobatrachus occipitalis (13.97%), Ptychadena oxyrhynchus (10.29%) Ptychadena pumilio (5.88%), Ptychadena bibroni (5.14%) Leptopelis spiritusnoctis (2.94%), Arthroleptis poecilonotus (2.21%) and Arthroleptissp. (0.74%). The Faculty of Agriculture/Law recorded the highest species richness (1.86) and species diversity (1.5) while the Faculty of Engineering recorded the lowest species richness (0.60) and species diversity (0.52). There was no significant difference between the amphibian species/individuals collected between the Faculties (p>0.05), but there was a significant difference between the number of specimens collected for the species represented (p<0.05). The low number of amphibian species recorded in this study may be attributed to disturbance of the natural habitat of amphibians through educational activities which was noticed across the six selected faculties. Therefore, continuous monitoring of amphibian population in the University of Benin, especially in areas heavily impacted by human activities, should be prioritized.
