Current trend of vertebrate studies in Nigeria

This study was conducted to evaluate the most studied class among Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals in Nigeria. Data were obtained from the Web of Science core collection from 1970-2020 with the inclusion of each class (“Fish” “Amphibians”, “Reptiles” “Birds” and “Mammals”) and country (“Nigeria”) as the search terms. The most studied class, fields within each class (Web of Science subject categories), most cited article and author, and affiliation with most publication were identified and used to reveal the most studied class in Nigeria. The results show that the class Fish with a total 536 publications, is the leading research focuses, most studied and had the highest number of publications, followed by Birds (214), then Mammals (52), Amphibians (30) and Reptiles (25) which is the least studied and with the least number of publications. It can be concluded that research on Fish remained the hotspot, whereas there is a paucity of data and research on Reptiles. Attention should be given to the least studied classes i.e. Amphibians and Reptiles so as to achieve a balance across the vertebrate classes.