Research Focus:
My research focus is mainly on fish biology/aquaculture as well as environmental biology/pollution.
My interest in fish biology particularly at the initial stage of my career led to several studies on the food and feeding habits, age and growth, as well as reproductive biology of many fish species in many water bodies in Nigeria. These studies provided very useful information for rational exploitation of the fish species in the various water bodies. More recently such studies are aimed at providing vital information for artificial production of local ornamental fish species for aquaria aquaculture, and also the use of local plants as anesthetic during transportation of live fish
Nutritional studies on the biochemical composition, energy levels and absorption of nutrients in the food consumed from the wild, as well as activities of digestive enzymes in the alimentary canal of culturable fish species studied, provided valuable base-line information necessary for formulation of adequate artificial feeds for culture fishes and also for selection of the right live food to culture for fishes.
My research in aquaculture primarily focused on culture, evaluation and utilization of non- conventional animal feed ingredients such as maggots, earthworm, palm grub, tadpole, garden snail and termites in the replacement of fish meal in diets of cultured fish. Results from this research on supplementation of fish meal with these cheap, yet adequate feed materials have significantly reduced running cost of fish culture enterprise by resource-poor fish farmers. Several publications and postgraduate degrees emanated from this line of research. Furthermore, the Ph.D Thesis from this research won the Best Ph.D Thesis Award in Biological Science within the Nigeria University System in 2007, under the National Universities Doctoral Thesis Award Scheme (NUDTAS) of The National Universities Commission.
More recent interest on environmental biology/pollution and toxicology stimulated the research on limnological assessments of some inland and coastal water bodies in Nigeria and also the effects of pollutants on the biology of resident biota, in order to establish the impact of anthropogenic discharges/inputs on aquatic organisms. The studies have revealed pollution status of the water bodies studied and the disruption of normal development of resident organisms with recommendations of remedy measures.
In addition, my recent interest in biodiversity of animals in Nigeria led to my current co- supervision of a Ph.D. research on biodiversity assessment of amphibians and reptiles in Nigeria with colleagues in Kumning Institute of Zoology of Chinese Academy of Science, China, a project that commenced in 2015.
