Description: Clonal diatom cultures are a valuable resource for research from which sequence data such as 18S, 28S, ITS, and rbcL can be produced for current integrative taxonomical as well as metabarcoding studies. These strains with their plethora of valves of single origin provide the opportunity to study the variability of their phenotypic features and morphometrics by LM and SEM. The identification of these strains, however, turns out to be difficult since morphological features established in decades of microscopic investigation of mixed samples are not the stable and clear-cut taxonomic characters as expected. This means that identification has to go beyond current taxonomic concepts preferably going back to the original concept of the name which is calibrated by the type of the name of the species.

Audience: Participants with an interest in understanding diatom taxonomy in its many aspects. Both beginning and experienced diatomists will hopefully receive some useful information for their own studies.