Crossword clues for diatom
diatom
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Diatom \Di"a*tom\ (d[imac]`[.a]*t[o^]m), n. [Gr. dia`tomos cut in two. See Diatomous.]
(Bot.) One of the Diatomace[ae], a family of minute unicellular Alg[ae] having a siliceous covering of great delicacy, each individual multiplying by spontaneous division. By some authors diatoms are called Bacillari[ae], but this word is not in general use.
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A particle or atom endowed with the vital principle.
The individual is nothing. He is no more than the diatom, the bit of protoplasm.
--Mrs. E. Lynn Linton.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. A group of minute unicellular algae having a siliceous covering of great delicacy, now categorized as class ''(taxlink Diatomophyceae class noshow=1)'' or division Bacillariophyta, formerly all included in the order ''(taxlink Diatomaceae order noshow=1)'', now obsolete.
WordNet
n. microscopic unicellular marine or freshwater colonial alga having cell walls impregnated with silica
Wikipedia
Diatoms are a major group of algae, and are among the most common types of phytoplankton. Diatoms are unicellular, although they can form colonies in the shape of filaments or ribbons (e.g. Fragilaria), fans (e.g. Meridion), zigzags (e.g. Tabellaria), or stars (e.g. Asterionella). The first diatom formally described in scientific literature, the colonial Bacillaria paradoxa, was found in 1783 by Danish naturalist Otto Friedrich Müller. Diatoms are producers within the food chain. A unique feature of diatom cells is that they are enclosed within a cell wall made of silica (hydrated silicon dioxide) called a frustule. These frustules show a wide diversity in form, but are usually almost bilaterally symmetrical, hence the group name. The symmetry is not perfect since one of the valves is slightly larger than the other, allowing one valve to fit inside the edge of the other. Fossil evidence suggests that they originated during, or before, the early Jurassic period. Only male gametes of centric diatoms are capable of movement by means of flagella. Diatom communities are a popular tool for monitoring environmental conditions, past and present, and are commonly used in studies of water quality.
Usage examples of "diatom".
I was the blue-green algae floating on the currents, soaking up sunlight, and I was a diatom and an arrowworm and a kerfer slicing open the soft tissues of a jellyfish.
The basic structure of the two diatom graphs was the same -- a perfect Bernaud diagram.
The doctor kindly offered to send him the best microscope in Srinagar, the property of a colleague whose mania was diatoms.
The way they tolt me, marine life fed on diatoms, which is these colonies of algae.
Yoke sent her control mesh out over the sullenly floating imipolex cube and turned it back into seawater, complete with an assortment of local diatoms and plankton.
The biologicals were all alla-made realware: primarily coral polyps and the diatoms they fed upon.
Motile points of crimson light lived io the material and drifted about from place to place like diatoms on the crest of a wave. They tended, for whatever reason, to gravitate to the high points of her body.
But in order to facilitate axonal repair, I inserted DNA from a species of diatom.
She was swimming out through layers of life, and she sensed the subtle sounds of living things washing through the sphere: the smooth rush of the fish as they swam in their tight schools, the bubbling murmur of the krill on which they browsed, the hiss of the diatoms and algae that fed them, and the deep infrasonic rumble of the water itself, compression waves pulsing through its bulk.
Musing over his spherical field-bound pond, stirring it with a glass rod, watching the algae twine on the rod, making history among the micro-organisms, the paramecia and rotifers, the euglenoids and diatoms, the desmids, amphipods, ostracods, wreaking havoc among the daphnia.
After all, humans did eat the desmids, which differed from the diatoms only in three particulars: Their shells were flexible, they could not move (and for that matter neither could all but a few groups of diatoms), and they did not speak.
The smothering toxicity of the dinoflagellates as they cluster and bloom into a red tide kills the diatoms.
Bigheaded carp cause blue-green algae to predominate, whereas Silver Chinese carp, which are phytoplankton eaters, produce a shift toward diatom algae.
In addition, sulphur compounds deriving from algae and diatoms, mixed with the ozone generated by the sparks of electric cars and tramways, impregnate the air throughout the galleries and stalls.
Among plankton, some species were practically wiped out—92 percent of foraminiferans, for instance—while other organisms like diatoms, designed to a similar plan and living alongside, were comparatively unscathed.