Abstract
As a contribution to our knowledge of diatom biodiversity and biogeography in the United States, high resolution light microscope images are provided for 139 diatom taxa recorded from lake, stream, spring and glacier habitats in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska. The spring had the highest taxa richness of the four habitats that were sampled, likely owing to the relative stability of this habitat compared to the others. Most of the taxa were described from northern and alpine locations in Europe and North America and are typical of habitats in the northern Rocky Mountains, with two notable exceptions. Surirellaarctica had been reported previously only from locations in the High Arctic of North America, north of 68°N latitude. Gomphonemacaperatum has a disjunct distribution in montane regions of the eastern and far western contiguous United States. This may be the first record of this taxon from Alaska.
Highlights
For a land area as large as Alaska (1,717,856 km2), there are relatively few published articles on freshwater diatom taxonomy and biodiversity (Patrick and Freese 1961, Foged 1971, 1981, McLaughlin and Stone 1986, Hein 1990)
Samples of benthic diatoms were collected from four sites in WRST (Table 1, Fig. 1)
The pools appeared to extend to the bottom of the glacier, so diatoms in the pool samples may have originated from greater depth
Summary
For a land area as large as Alaska (1,717,856 km2), there are relatively few published articles on freshwater diatom taxonomy and biodiversity (Patrick and Freese 1961, Foged 1971, 1981, McLaughlin and Stone 1986, Hein 1990). All of these studies predate the general availability of scanning electron microscopy and relied on taxonomic references that today are widely considered to be incomplete and out-of-date.
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