Diatom Diversity and Phylogenetics in Coastal Ecosystems

Diatoms represent a highly diverse lineage of microalgae, forming the backbone of coastal primary production and playing a pivotal role in global biogeochemical cycles. Their siliceous cell walls exhibit intricate morphologies that conceal a wealth of cryptic species, often undetectable by light microscopy alone. Advances in molecular phylogenetics have revealed deep evolutionary divergences within major centric and pennate clades, clarifying the relationships among key genera such as Thalassiosira, Skeletonema and Minidiscus. In coastal environments, diatom assemblages respond rapidly to physicochemical gradients—nutrient availability, salinity and temperature—shaping seasonal successions and sometimes triggering harmful algal blooms. Genetic markers drawn from mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes now inform divergence time estimates, uncovering speciation events that date back tens of millions of years. Such insights not only enhance taxonomy but also underpin ecological monitoring, enabling high‐resolution tracking of species distributions and the prediction of bloom dynamics under changing climate regimes. The integration of morphological, genomic and ecological data has thus established a holistic framework for understanding diatom evolution and functionality in coastal ecosystems worldwide.

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Diatom Diversity and Phylogenetics in Coastal Ecosystems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in diatom diversity and phylogenetics in coastal ecosystems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Metabarcoding: A high‐throughput DNA sequencing approach used to identify multiple species within environmental samples by targeting standardized genetic regions.

Molecular marker: A specific DNA sequence used to distinguish taxa or infer genetic relationships across populations or species.

Phylogenetics: The study of evolutionary relationships among organisms, often inferred from molecular sequence data.

Mitochondrial genome: The complete set of genes contained within the mitochondria, inherited maternally and useful for resolving evolutionary lineages.

Chloroplast genome: The DNA sequence of the chloroplast, encoding genes vital for photosynthesis and commonly used in algal phylogenetic analyses.

Divergence time: An estimated point in geological history when two lineages split from a common ancestor, usually inferred from molecular clocks.

References

1. Rich diversity and active spatial–temporal dynamics of Thalassiosira species revealed by time-series metabarcoding analysis. ISME Communications (2024).
2. Comparative analysis of full-length mitochondrial genomes of five Skeletonema species reveals conserved genome organization and recent speciation. BMC Genomics (2021).
3. Comparative Analysis of Chloroplast Genomes of Thalassiosira Species. Frontiers in Marine Science (2021).