When diatom hunter Karthick Balasubramanian was invited to a research expedition on the Blue Mountains of Mizoram, little did he know the trek would result in producing the first dataset on diatoms from aerial habitats in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot. Diatoms are microscopic algae living in a “glass house,” a self-constructed shell they make from silica.
- Scientists have recorded the first dataset on diatoms from tree mosses in the Blue Mountains in Mizoram in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot.
- They discovered 53 diatom taxa belonging to 21 genera -all from tree mosses. But much remains to be covered in the Blue Mountains habitat regarding the diatom community.
- Diatoms are critical to the marine food chain and sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide in the oceans.
Karthick had joined scientists R. Ganeshan and N.A. Aravind as they combed the mountains from low to high altitudes to map tree and soil mollusc diversity. As a scientist studying diatoms diversity and distribution from biodiversity hotspots, he was expecting to look for diatoms in streams on the Blue Mountains, but it was the winter months (January-February) of 2019, and streams ran dry.
“Fortunately, or unfortunately, streams were dry, so there was no water, and I suddenly realised that I had no job to do, so I decided to be a field assistant to them for the next three days,” says Karthick, of the D3 lab at Agharkar Research Institute, which holds South Asia’s biggest diatom herbarium.
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