Welcome to marine littoral diatoms
The last time that anyone attempted to produce a full account of the marine littoral diatoms of a country was over 100 years ago, when H.M. Peragallo and M. Peragallo produced their Diatomées marines de France (1897-1908). There has never been a global flora for marine littoral species and the task of producing one will be enormous, since this is the most species-rich of all biotopes for diatoms: there are probably >50,000 species, of which the majority are undescribed.
Since there are only a few 10s of taxonomists working on marine littoral diatoms, progress towards a global flora will not be rapid, but we hope that the present site will make progress just a bit faster than it would otherwise would have been, by providing high-quality photographs and accompanying descriptive data, backed by specimens in permanent collections. We provide no guarantee about the accuracy of identifications made here but believe that these will converge on 'the truth' as the community of diatom taxonomists inspects and comments on the specimens illustrated.