Right under our noses … I was quite excited by the discovery I wrote about in the previous report.  It is not often that we find a new record quite as intriguing as this one, and it captures the essence of my message in “…

Another post, another new diatom species. This one, though, has been hiding in plain sight for a long time. Sometimes new discoveries just involve rearranging the neurons in our visual cortex and temporal lobe: bit.ly/4pvaFCG

Stranger things … As the previous two posts show, those of us who study algae are still apt to be surprised from time to time.  This is not a group where basic understanding of organisms and their distribu…

Nature continues to surprise us, and this post describes the discovery of an unusual chrysophyte growing in a chalk stream this summer (I normally associate them with remote mountainous areas in winter): bit.ly/48gEbpD

This summer has turned our rivers into an "all inclusive resort" where algae can sunbath on river beds and generally enjoy life. They are not necessarily a homogeneous mass, and this post describes the variation I found in one river in northern England: bit.ly/4g8dLs1

This was part of a nationwide CS project, with Herts Wildlife Trust as local partners. Vaucheria almost never fruits in rivers - that’s its superpower - so we don’t know which species we’re dealing with. Richard Lansdown has had some success but we haven’t given him anything from the Beane.

Blinded by the light … One of the themes of this blog is of the importance, for an ecologist, of making repeated visits to a site in order to see it in all its moods and tempers.   And so it was that I cam…

Long, warm summer days create the perfect conditions for filamentous algae to grow in lakes and rivers. What does this mean for the anticipated spread of data centres to fuel our appetite for AI? bit.ly/4fYxt9J

Those who have followed my "verdant rivers" series on www.microscopesandmonsters.wordpress.com may be interested to see this newly published paper. Well done to Hannah and thanks for including me in the team:
aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Reflections on why #Vaucheria mats proliferate in some types of British river in my latest post:
bit.ly/3JaKela

Gateway to hell … This is a brief postscript to the posts I wrote based on my visit to a hot spring in Tunisia last year (see “Life in hot water …” and “hot diatoms …”) prompted by a reference to hot springs in the …

Never able to resist a diversion, this post continues from my explorations of hot springs in Tunisia last year with some evidence that Augustine of Hippo was also aware of life in these extreme habitats, and that this may have informed his (and, therefore our) conception of hell: bit.ly/4kAhJKw

"The perfect storm" is quite a good metaphor for the way several factors combine to cause algal proliferations in UK rivers. Except that the absence of storms (and associated spates) is part of the problem:: bit.ly/4nS2TCn

Living rocks, gently rolling … A trope in film noir where the protagonist is seduced by a femme fatale which came to mind when I was in Ambleside earlier in June.   There were signs of a surface cyanobacterial scum in Windermere…

I'm trying to write some posts that give Cyanobacteria their due respect as natural components of freshwater ecosystems, rather than as perpetual "villains" of the eutrophication franchise. This post describes the formation of oncoids - mini stromatolites - in a Cumbrian quarry: bit.ly/4487Cb4

A garden of sub-visual life-forms … We are inclined to overlook the very small that dwell among us; yet, without them we ourselves could not exist; for every one of us is a Garden of sub-visual life forms … Think of them as God’s tin…

Exploring the beautiful microscopic world of Rivularia in my latest post, and wondering how we can communicate the positive roles that cyanobacteria play in ecosystems to the wider public: bit.ly/4l2zao4

Diatoms from remote places … Back in December, I wrote a post about a small and obscure diatom that I found during analysis of a slide from the Shetland Islands (see: “Blending in with the crowd …”).  This post is about anothe…

I describe a record of the diatom Distrionella asterionelloides from the Shetland Islands in my latest post. But is this genuinely "rare" or just under recorded or overlooked? bit.ly/4ky4paI

Teesdale’s unseen natural history … We followed on of our favourite walks through Teesdale a couple of weeks ago, finishing at Widdybank Fell, beside Cow Green Reservoir, where sapphire blue spring gentians were sprinkled across the …

Reflections here on how the statement "“In the end we will only conserve what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught” applies to the much-maligned Cyanobacteria: bit.ly/3H0cKVA

Sick note … The recent brief hiatus in posts was due to my annual trip to China to visit family.  We spent the last weekend of our fortnight together in Xi’an, a fascinating city, home to the Terraco…

A tale of an ecologist and a stream both suffering from a mild lurgy in my latest post: bit.ly/3Z3N9kD

More speculation about the life of a shade-loving diatom in my latest post: bit.ly/41TbPhO

Just found my 1980s version of ggplot …

Here's a puzzle: a Eunotia that has many small discoid chloroplasts, rather than the two plates that the (limited) literature on live diatom identification tells us to watch out for. bit.ly/3Rd2qLH

Darkness at the edge of streams … The snow dusting the tops of the Lake District fells as we drove towards our field sites presaged a day of brutally cold conditions although, thankfully, the long period of high pressure that has s…

Stumbled across some Eunotia formicina during recent field work and started wondering why it occurs in a few locations, but is absent from similar sites upstream and downstream. No answers, just a few ideas ... bit.ly/4h44jox

The gateway to enlightenment … My recent posts “Diatom taxonomy in five paradigm shifts …” and “What you see is not what you get …” were, in effect, extended apologies, on behalf of my fellow diatomists, for making the task of l…

Latest instalment in my "Diatoms 101" tackles the thorny but basic task of putting names onto shapes: bit.ly/4hY0ySx. With some help from www.diatoms.org.

In search of red snow … A recurring theme of this blog is that natural history happens all year round, even if natural historians are less enthusiastic about stepping outside during the colder periods of the year.   I’ve …

Latest post showcases the research of Alex Innes Thomson from SAMS, who has been searching for snow algae in the Scottish highlands: bit.ly/40OMDZ6

We’ve all heard people say “I saw history happening” in response to an event. Yesterday, I think we saw histiography happening in front of our eyes too.

In hot water … We have all read about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) might change our lives but here’s a new angle: how might AI change our rivers?  An article in The Guardian was headlined “Fears of water and …

What effect might AI have on our rivers? Some iffy reporting by @theguardian.com unpicked in my latest post: bit.ly/4g1aMQI. Yes, it might have an impact, but not the one that they suggest.

Add me in, please! Martyn

I contributed to two multi-authored papers that, by coincidence, both appeared this week, lnkd.in/e6Bbe3_X and lnkd.in/e6YdJsJy, with authors from no less than 24 countries spread across five continents. That's a nice way to start 2025.

Proficiency testing and cross-laboratory method comparison to support standardisation of diatom DNA metabarcoding for freshwater biomonitoring DNA metabarcoding of benthic diatoms has been successfully applied for biomonitoring at the national scale and can now be considered technically ready for routine application. However, protocols and m...

We're moving beyond the exploratory stages of using metabarcoding for routine assessments of diatoms, and beginning to grapple with the myriad challenges necessary to make it fully operational (and internationally transferable).
doi.org/10.3897/mbmg...

What you see is not what you get … I am having second thoughts about one of the five “paradigm shifts” that shaped modern diatom taxonomy and identification listed in the previous post.  I suggested that the invention of high resolu…

Next step in "Diatoms 101" looks at the pros and cons of cleaning diatoms. Why do we drop healthy living organisms into strong oxidising agents before we try to identify them? bit.ly/406Q7oc

I wasn't 100% sure about this myself, to be honest. Maybe the mountants are just an incremental change on from the first diatomist who thought that dropping diatoms into strong oxidising agents would be better than looking at them in their live state?

Diatom taxonomy in five paradigm shifts … The second module of “Diatoms 101” addresses how to identify diatoms but, before we look at the important features of diatom cells, I need to address the reasons why newcomers to diatoms often find…

The next stage of my "Diatoms 101" series of posts addresses identification but first I want to explain why #diatom names are forever changing. I've tried to encapsulate this in five "paradigm shifts". I'd love to hear your thoughts too, whether agreeing or suggesting alternatives. bit.ly/407upBL.

Friends with benefits/ For the next post I walked from the side of Ennerdale Water to the edge of the River Ehen, into which the lake discharges.  I’m barely three hundred metres from the weir that marks their …

I'm lucky to have an opportunity to revisit the same sites over a number years to follow seasonal trends in stream diatoms. Tabellaria flocculosa shows different patterns in different streams within the same region, which I cannot fully explain (though I do make some guesses ....): bit.ly/4gDpUEI

A cold case … Fieldwork last week was simultaneously brutal and wonderful: air temperatures were barely above freezing and river levels were just high enough for an injudicious plunge to grab a stone to result i…

A very cold day of fieldwork in the Lake District last week resulted in some spectacular views, numb fingers and an observation of Didymosphenia colonies growing in the littoral zone of Ennerdale Water: bit.ly/49M7r6A