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Abstract
A very small diatom, Navicula pulchripora Kaczmarska & Chan, was isolated from the warm coastal waters of South Texas, USA (27° 50' N, 97° 02″W). It is a motile, lightly silicified and fast-growing organism able to complete up to 3 doublings/day. It is free living when in exponential growth phase but it aggregates within gelatinous masses when approaching stationary phase. Cells contain one or two plate-like chloroplasts. In girdle view valves are convex and frustules rectangular. A frustule may contain up to 40 girdle bands. Valves are lanceolate, 3.7–6.6 μm long, 2.0–3.0 μm wide, with uniseriate, mainly parallel striae, 57–69 striae in 10 μm and 74–94 poroid areolae in 10 μm. In some aspects of cell structure N. pulchripora is similar to the marine members of the sections Minusculae (small size, shape and fine ornamentation), Microstigmaticae (wide girdle) and Pelagicae (plate-like chloroplast and wide girdle). It differs from the first section in having a wide girdle, from the second in lacking “butterfly” chloroplasts and from the third in lacking ribbon-shaped chloroplast and not forming chain-like colonies.