A new algae site has seen the light: Diatom Flora of Britain and Ireland.
Looks nice and solid. Much information about the morphology and very nice pictures. Major part of them clear black and white photos of prepared, cleaned frustules. I would have expected more photos with chloroplasts though, knowing Eileen Cox is involved. She did write a whole book back in 1996 about the inner life of the diatoms – giving us algae counters valuable information on how to use chloroplasts in identifying diatoms in our chloroplast containing samples.
At the moment there is almost 200 records and the amount should grow steadily. The team writes in their announcement about the launch of the new online flora on Diatom-L list, that the “website aims to support people with an interest in diatom taxonomy, systematics, ecology and biogeography” and that’s why I’m hoping to see more on ecology on this page later.
One tiny annoying thing is that the alphabetical list of species disappears as soon as one gets to the next level and one needs to click one time extra (there goes the valuable microseconds of my life!) to get to see the rest of the taxa again.
References for the species are this time given in chronological order, which gives a nice historical perspective.
Longing to see the Aulacoseiras here!
EILEEN J. COX. Identification of Freshwater Diatoms from Live Material. Chapman & Hall, London, 1996, 158 pp.