Diatom of the Month December 2021 – A quintessential benthic diatom: celebrating 20 years of Seminavis robusta
Biofilms are photosynthetically efficient and provide ecosystem services such as erosion resistance and nutrient cycling. Marine biofilms are often dominated by species-rich benthic diatoms.
Diatom of the Month November 2021 – The diatoms, my friend, are blowin’ in the wind
Why do these particular diatoms live in this place? What role do these species play as part of the ecosystem?
Diatom of the Month October 2021 – Better Together: Rhopalodiaceae team up with nitrogen-fixing bacteria to survive in freshwaters with low nutrients
Nitrogen is required for all living organisms to build proteins and nucleic acids (such as DNA and RNA). However, while nitrogen in its gaseous form makes up approximately 78% of […]
Diatom of the Month September 2021 – Not every diatom acts the same: a bedtime story
I study the diversity of benthic diatoms, with a particular interest in the functional traits of species, such as size, mobility and nitrogen-fixing abilities, because they affect the way that […]
Diatom of the Month August 2021 – Announcing an online workshop with the DOM community
The Diatom of the Month series of posts project has been running every month without interruption since 2015. DOM December 2019 made an extensive review of the first 4 years […]
Diatoms make the world happy: educational outreach using diatom-based activities in the classroom
Websites are a very useful tool for anyone seeking information. However, people who are unaware of diatoms or uninterested in them will not google for diatoms. To inform such people […]
Towards biomonitoring 2.0: Comments on the applicability of diatom DNA metabarcoding in Mediterranean rivers
The difficulties in identifying diatoms based on their morphology have led to the pursuit of new methods that might make diatomists’ lives much easier. One of these methods is DNA […]
Gomphonema clevei, oxygen and Lake Tanganyika, Africa
If anything is well known about Lake Tanganyika, it is its enormous volume, length, and depth. Yet, much less is known about the lake’s ecological history and the potential of […]
Invisible to the naked eye but unique for Neotropical biodiversity
In this Diatom of the Month post we bring the topic of how organisms that are invisible to the naked eye contribute to regional biodiversity. In a recent open-access paper […]
Exploring new territories: sampling phytobenthos in large rivers
Freshwater phytobenthos comprises the algae that live on or are attached to surfaces of, for example rocks, macrophytes (vascular water plants) or sediment/sand grains of rivers and lakes (Figure 1). […]
The last story for 2020: experiences from a remotely organized diatom workshop
2020 has been exceptional due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we all know, most meetings, conferences and workshops were either cancelled, changed to online events, or postponed to next year […]
Lesotho’s Lake Letsie and Aulacoseira granulata
Lake Letsie is the largest natural freshwater lake in Lesotho (southern Africa) and is situated within the Letseng-la-Letsie Nature Reserve, at an altitude of 2400m.asl. Isolated mountain lakes, like many […]
Embarking on the “100 Diatom Genomes Project”
Diatoms, a class of microalgae, are found in nearly all marine and freshwater habitats and are the most species-rich algal class, with at least 100,000 species. They are important to […]
What diatoms have we covered in 2015-2020?
DOM #59 might down as the shortest Diatom of the Month ever, so please do take a good look at our performance so far! Let’s see what diatom ‘characters’ have […]
Hidden Diversity in Pinnularia borealis, and Where it Lives
When we think about diatoms, we tend to imagine all kinds of aquatic habitats, ranging from oceans and coastal ecosystems, to lakes, rivers, ponds and puddles. However, soils and terrestrial […]
