Diversity and distribution of freshwater invertebrates in the Lake Victoria Basin

Lake Victoria basin is located in the upper reaches of the Nile River basin and occupies an area of about 251,000km2 of which 69,000km2 is the lake area (UNEP, 2006) and is shared by Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. The basin contains Lake Victoria, which is the largest freshwater lake in Africa and the second largest freshwater lake of the world (UNEP, 2006). Lake Victoria draws 20% of its water from the Kagera, Mara, Simiyu, Gurumeti, Yala, Nyando, Migori and Sondu-Miriu rivers. The remaining 80% is from direct rainfall. The catchment area is surrounded by mountains on all sides except for the northern part. This dataset consists of seventy (70) occurrence records of macro-invertebrates of different families that were observed from various part of Simiyu River Catchment in northern Tanzania. The dataset covers the period of December 2019, and contains 70 occurrence records belonging to 8 orders, and 27 families. Mobilization and preparation of this dataset was funded by JRS Biodiversity Foundation through Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Biodiversity Information for Development programme.