Silicon is an essential element for diatom frustule synthesis and is usually taken up only by dividing cells. With '8Ge, a radioactive analog of Si, the cell cycle marker event of frustule formation was identified for individual species of diatom. The frequency of cells within a population undergoing this division event was estimated, and the cell division rate was calculated. In laboratory cul...

Epipsammic diatoms have important implications for ecosystem processes in lotic environments. Most of the studies on benthic diatoms concentrate on epilithic diatoms and very little is known about epipsammic diatoms. The objective of this study was to assess epipsammic diatom communities in streams in relation to environmental conditions. Epipsammic diatoms and water quality sampling was done a...

The adsorption of plutoniurn-23 7, added from an acid solution, by two species of marine phytoplankton, MOTIOchrysis luLheri Droop, a flagellated chrysomonad, and Phaeodactylutn tricornutum Bohlin, a diatom, is governed by a passive mechanism. This is clearly indicated by the observation that the rapid rates of sorption were not significantly different for live and heat-killed cells incubated a...

Numerous taxonomic groups exhibit an evolutionary trajectory in cell or body size. The size structure of marine phytoplankton communities strongly affects food web structure and organic carbon export into the ocean interior, yet macroevolutionary patterns in the size structure of phytoplankton communities have not been previously investigated. We constructed a database of the size of the silica...

This study describes the development of periphytic communities established on artificial Ž . substrates in tilapia Oreochromis niloticus cages during a 10-week experiment conducted in the Meghna River, Bangladesh. Qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the periphyton were recorded, including diatom community composition and primary productivity. Fish grazed actively on the periphyton a...

Benthic diatoms and bacteria often co-operatively build up phototrophic epilithic biofilms. Studying the properties and contributions of the individual partners requires the establishment and maintenance of axenic cultures of the involved organisms. Axenification of biofilm organisms is often challenging, because bacteria as well as diatom cells are embedded in a matrix of extracellular polymer...

Diatoms are a group of unicellular algae that have been recorded and classified for over 200 years and have been used in a range of applications in forensic science. We have developed a quantitative diatom-based reconstruction technique to confirm drowning as a cause of death and localize the site of drowning in two recent, high-profile, case studies. In both case studies we collected diatom sa...

[1] We present a continuous record of fossil diatoms from Huguang Maar Lake (HML) in southeastern China, spanning the time interval 17,500 to 6000 calendar years (cal years) B.P. The seasonal change in relative abundance of the dominant diatom taxa, Aulacoseira and Cyclotella species, can be used as a proxy of the strength of winter monsoon winds (WMW), which is supported by the results of a se...

A 2200-yr long, high-resolution (~5 yr) record of drought variability in northwest Montana is inferred from diatoms and δ18O values of bio-induced carbonate preserved in a varved lacustrine core from Foy Lake. A previously developed model of the diatom response to lake-level fluctuations is used to constrain estimates of paleolake levels derived from the diatom data. High-frequency (decadal) fl...