diatoms.org

diatoms.org provides open online aggregation of taxonomic and ecological information on North American diatoms to support consistent identification, ecological and biogeographic research, and the use of diatoms as environmental indicators.

Key Features:

• Content curation community: Aggregates existing taxonomic information and generates new content with community-contributed corrections and updates addressing nomenclatural changes.
• Extensive species database: Maintains over 1,000 species pages contributed by more than 100 content creators, capturing taxonomic and ecological details for North American diatoms.
• Advanced data access technologies: Implements data access mechanisms to support retrieval and programmatic refinement of curated taxonomic content.

Scientific Applications:

• Taxonomic consistency: Centralizes updated taxonomic information to enable consistent identification of diatom taxa.
• Ecological and biogeographical studies: Provides distributional and ecological data to support research on diatom ecology and biogeography.
• Environmental indicators: Supplies taxonomic and ecological information used to apply diatoms as bioindicators for assessing aquatic conditions and environmental change.

Methodology:

Integrates community-contributed content with user feedback mechanisms and advanced data access technologies to continuously refine and expand taxonomic and ecological information.