Diatom

Humans are slow

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:04:00 -0400

Diatoms have been around for a loooong time (Since the Jurassic period. Yeah, my ancestors knew the dinosaurs. Jealous?), but humans didn’t know we existed until 1703 when some English dude saw me under a microscope.

The water is a beautiful place for us diatoms to live, but...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:39:00 -0400

The water is a beautiful place for us diatoms to live, but it’s no vacation. Since there are so many of us, we’re a pretty important step on the food chain. All kinds of sea life eat us, like krill, plankton, fish, mollusks, and whales. I’ve lost a good number of friends and family to hungry creatures. I just hope I’m not next.

Some things about me

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:32:00 -0400

I’m unicellular
I’m microscopic (Although, I’ve been told I’m pretty big for being so small.)
Like most diatoms, I’m photosynthetic. (But I do associate with some heterotrophic diatoms. I don’t discriminate.)
I have large vacuoles to get rid of all the waste I don’t need.
My cell wall is made of a valve and a girdle and contains a lot of silica. There are two parts to it that fit together.
The more I divide and reproduce, the smaller I get. But I can expand in size again by forming an auxospore using sexual reproduction.
My DNA is inside my nucleoid.

This romantic picture was taken at my friend’s wedding to...

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:53:00 -0500

This romantic picture was taken at my friend’s wedding to himself. Some binary fission happened shortly after this. ;D

Family is pretty important to me. We diatoms like to stick...

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:44:00 -0500

Family is pretty important to me. We diatoms like to stick together - literally. Our silica valves allow us to attach to each other in stacks and form colonies.

Where do I live?

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:04:00 -0500

Everywhere! Everywhere that has water, anyway. Fresh water, salt water, rivers, ponds, on the surface, on the seafloor, anywhere! I really like water.

I usually try to stick to fresh water bodies in the spring and fall when I thrive in them. (Although, I can live anywhere year-round and do quite well.)

But it’s easy for me to get to salt water in the summer and winter months. I may not have a ton of flagella, and I may not be very fast, but I can always hop on a rolling wave and get from one place to the next, from one body of water to another, to one country to another. Sometimes I also hitchhike by attaching myself to the legs of birds and other animals, who can then transport me around. Some might call this freeloading, but I call it taking advantage of the resources around me while putting forth as little effort as possible.

You see that atmosphere? I made 70% of it.

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:33:00 -0500

You see that atmosphere? I made 70% of it.

Classification

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:18:00 -0500

Yeah, I know stereotypes are bad and all, but that doesn’t mean we all aren’t classified. I am, too.

My name is: Eukaryota, chromalveolata, heterokontophyta, bacillariophyceae

But diatoms can be classified in two orders:

Centrale, which means I have valve striae symmetrically arranged from my central areola.
Pennale, which means my valve striae are arranged bilaterally symmetrical from a line.

If you want to know what I look like, here’s a diagram of...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:08:00 -0500

If you want to know what I look like, here’s a diagram of my structure.