How to Use diatom in a Sentence

diatom

noun
  • And only a single diatom species matched the tap water taken from his home.
    Jordan Michael Smith, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Jan. 2024
  • The fluffy green globes—supersize diatoms as large as a head of cabbage—are one of the planet’s most unusual plants.
    National Geographic, 8 Sep. 2016
  • Yee found that the same proton pump also helps diatoms make their tough silica shell.
    Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine, 6 July 2023
  • In roughly a third of the ocean, iron is so rare that its absence can hinder the growth of diatoms and other phytoplankton.
    Emily Underwood, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Jan. 2020
  • Because small fish in the lakes eat zooplankton, a plunge in the diatom numbers would cause fish populations to crash.
    Tim Folger, National Geographic, 17 Nov. 2020
  • These diatom shells, combined with the chemical compositions and the size ranges of the grains, all suggest that a tsunami occurred when the skull was buried.
    Charles Choi, Discover Magazine, 25 Oct. 2017
  • The Pseudonitzchia species of algae, forms of diatoms, more commonly create red tides off the coast of California.
    Jenny Howard, National Geographic, 5 July 2019
  • Under this scenario, a spider in the Cenozoic era would expire and become entrapped in a diatom mat.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 26 Apr. 2022
  • At least three species of dinoflagellates and one diatom species are responsible for the toxic mess of red tides in the United States.
    Jenny Howard, National Geographic, 5 July 2019
  • When a krill dies, the powerful enzymes in its belly that dissolve diatoms turn on and swiftly autodigest the body.
    Lucy Jakub, Harper's magazine, 2 Mar. 2020
  • Diatoms, on the other hand — another type of phytoplankton found in the Black Sea — can make the water look somewhat darker.
    Elizabeth Howell Space.com Contributor, Fox News, 15 June 2017
  • For instance, some of the evidence for the climate hypothesis comes from pollen and diatoms from the bottom of nearby Lake Ossa.
    Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 27 Feb. 2018
  • The algal cell pictured here in red, a Coscinodiscus diatom, is 90 micrometers across, or one tenth the width of a ballpoint pen’s tip.
    Leslie Nemo, Scientific American, 19 Feb. 2021
  • Unfortunately, Di Muro’s mother had washed his clothes after the evening of the murder—but diatoms can often survive a trip through the washing machine.
    Jordan Michael Smith, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Jan. 2024
  • From diatoms encased in glass to dinoflagellates that can cause toxic algae blooms, phytoplankton are a diverse group of algae that live in the ocean.
    Stephanie De Marco, Los Angeles Times, 18 Sep. 2019
  • The team will expand their research to imaging other fossil deposits to discover whether the diatom mats are also linked to preservation more broadly.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Going a step further, Martin proposed that using iron to trigger diatom blooms might help combat global warming.
    Emily Underwood, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Jan. 2020
  • Diatomaceous earth is an organic powder that consists of the fossilized remains of tiny aquatic organisms, called diatoms.
    Joseph Truini, Popular Mechanics, 8 Jan. 2019
  • Dinoflagellates and diatoms are the two main types of phytoplankton classes, according to the National Ocean Service.
    Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY, 3 Sep. 2023
  • Streams less influenced by glaciers have more diverse communities with more green algae and cyanobacteria, but with fewer cold-tolerant diatoms.
    Lesley Evans Ogden, Discover Magazine, 7 Apr. 2023
  • Brackish diatoms indicate lower lake levels because the water becomes saltier as the water evaporates.
    Emily J. Beverly, Quartz Africa, 26 Jan. 2020
  • Paleosols are typically full of pollen and microfossils of simple organisms, such as diatoms, a kind of algae that can indicate climate conditions.
    Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 20 May 2019
  • Goff and other researchers also look for microscopic marine organisms like diatoms and foraminifera, ancient DNA from marine life, changes to geochemistry, and, as in the Atacama, unexpected boulders.
    Nathaniel Scharping, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 Feb. 2023
  • The evidence, the two men said in the article, was clear: industrialized humanity had changed the composition of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and had modified the landscape and biosphere—including diatom populations.
    Jan Zalasiewicz, Scientific American, 1 Dec. 2016
  • Their observations supported the endosymbiotic theory of how the diatoms acquired the extra membrane around their chloroplasts.
    Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine, 6 July 2023
  • Algae diatoms need nitrate for biochemical processes, including the production of domoic acid.
    Tommy Wright, The Mercury News, 7 June 2017
  • Like foraminifera, each diatom species is extremely sensitive to environmental conditions.
    Jack Tamisiea, WIRED, 24 Sep. 2022
  • At right, a colonial collodarian radiolarian comprised of many individual cells, each with a central capsule, sharing a common jelly. Thalassionema nitzschioides is a diatom, a major group of algae and one of the most common types of phytoplankton.
    Discover Magazine, 3 June 2015
  • Prior studies suggested the diatom mats would have created an anaerobic environment, thanks to extracellular polymeric substances.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 26 Apr. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'diatom.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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