Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference

A great deal of progress has made to document the biodiversity of diatoms via diatoms.org. The diatoms.org project is a collaborative effort to provide accurate in diatom identification that supports researchers, federal, state, tribal, and local agencies to assess their waters and keep taxonomic keys relevant by continuous updates. To date there are 1099 species within 192 genera described on the diatoms.org website. It has become the largest single resource for species identification of diatoms and continues to grow. However, the ecological information within the website remains sparse, highly selective, and unconsolidated. Integrating ecological information and primary data with taxonomic and phenotypic data is critically important to understand the distribution of biodiversity across biological and spatio-temporal scales. Herein I present the results of a preliminary study linking diatoms.org data with a trait and environmental database revealing links of trait-form to ecosystem function. My goals are to provide a platform for open access to trait and consolidated environmental data to enhance testing capacity of realized and theoretical niche that will fully realize the potential of diatoms as model organisms for understanding how form follows function in ecology and evolution. Herein, I present a study from a preliminary diatom environmental data portal.