Dennis Vander Meer

My diatom adventures began at Iowa Lakeside Lab in 2004 with Sarah Spaulding and Mark Edlund. My interest in diatoms started as an idea to expand bio-assessment capabilities at Rhithron, and having some familiarity with diatoms, I volunteered to learn more. That was 9 years ago, and I’ve been identifying diatoms as part of our bio-assessment program ever since, monitoring the health of freshwater streams, rivers and lakes from Montana to the Philippines. Diatoms are fantastically interesting and the push the envelope as seemingly improbable forms of microscopic life on earth. I have also worked as a macro-invertebrate taxonomist, forest entomologist, invasive weed biological control expert, teacher and hydrologist, among many other things. There are so many interesting things in the natural world and so little time!