Article: Small wonders THE BROADER PICTURE

Considering that they account for roughly a quarter of the vegetable matter on earth, it's odd that diatoms don't have a higher profile. They are, as well as being ubiquitous, remarkably beautiful. But most people wouldn't recognise them if you held a great plateful of them right in front of their faces.

This may have something to do with the fact that the average diatom is between 2 and 200 microns long - that's around 1,000 times smaller than in the images shown here. But size isn't everything, especially if you exist in sufficient quantities. Diatoms, single- celled plants from one of the very lowest rungs on the evolutionary ladder, are everywhere - well, not quite everywhere, but ...

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