Study of fragmented fossil diatoms using an invariant correlation method

Abstract

The taxonomic identification of diatom species that constituted phytoplankton communities in remote times is determining in several research fields like ecology, evolution, paleoecology and biostratigraphy, In the last 30 years the use of fossil diatoms like environmental indicators has, become of prime importance. However the use of these organisms is limited since they are found in sediment samples mostly fragmented or pulverized. Tins may lead to confusion and loss of information. In this work we used invariant correlation to identify 12 species of fossil diatoms. With this method we were able to identify the diatom species from only a smalt fragment of the organisms. This methodology can be used for the development of an automated system of plankton identification. An automatized identification of diatoms would be able to guarantee a faster identification and also would reduce the time necessary for acomplishing analysis of samples highly fragmented.