How to Use diatom in a Sentence

diatom

noun
  • But diatoms punch far above their weight in the natural world.
    — Hanna Wickes, Kansas City Star, 20 Apr. 2026
  • And only a single diatom species matched the tap water taken from his home.
    — Jordan Michael Smith, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Jan. 2024
  • Yee found that the same proton pump also helps diatoms make their tough silica shell.
    — Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine, 6 July 2023
  • 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
  • Without diatoms, entire aquatic food webs would collapse.
    — Hanna Wickes, Kansas City Star, 20 Apr. 2026
  • 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, 3 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
  • 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, 27 Apr. 2020
  • 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
  • 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
  • These are the remains of shells, sea urchins, coral, plankton, and diatoms that drifted down to what was a seabed 25 million years ago, forming thick sheets of limestone.
    — Discover Magazine, 9 Feb. 2024
  • 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
  • Remarkably, some of Di Muro’s clothing contained clear traces of diatoms matching samples taken from the lake.
    — Jordan Michael Smith, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Jan. 2024
  • Cores taken from under the open ocean are often stained green from microscopic plants called diatoms that settle to the seafloor after dying, but this core contained none.
    — Douglas Fox, Scientific American, 1 July 2012
  • 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
  • Some, such as diatoms, can consume dissolved organic nutrients directly from the water.
    — Asher Elbein, WIRED, 2 Mar. 2025
  • 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
  • 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
  • The diatom species Skeletonema marinoi was the only phytoplankton species revived from the samples.
    — Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 1 Apr. 2025
  • Over time, algae and diatoms flourish, forming a richer food base that rejuvenates the pupfish population.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes, 29 Nov. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • Leave a comment View Comments The algae blooms would also attract zooplankton, which are small predators that feed on diatoms.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 5 Feb. 2025
  • 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
  • These deposits contain tiny microfossils of plankton, including organisms such as diatoms and coccolithophores that live on or near the ocean’s surface.
    — Suzanne Oconnell, The Conversation, 3 Sep. 2024
  • Brackish diatoms indicate lower lake levels because the water becomes saltier as the water evaporates.
    — Emily J. Beverly, Quartz Africa, 26 Jan. 2020
  • 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
  • Like foraminifera, each diatom species is extremely sensitive to environmental conditions.
    — Jack Tamisiea, WIRED, 24 Sep. 2022
  • Algae diatoms need nitrate for biochemical processes, including the production of domoic acid.
    — Tommy Wright, The Mercury News, 7 June 2017
  • 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

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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