The North American Diatom Symposium: A brief history, 1970-2024

The 2024 North American Diatom Symposium (NADS) represents the twenty-seventh time that the group formally gathered and the fourth time the group convened at Iowa Lakeside Lab. The first NADS meeting, called “Ecology of Freshwater Diatoms,” was held in October 1970 at the Cedar Creek Natural History Area in Minnesota and was organized by J. Platt Bradbury and Ryan Drum. Four years later, the group gathered at Hocking Hills in Ohio for the “Second North American Symposium on Diatom Systematics and Ecology”, a meeting that set the stage for the now biennial gathering of this informal society. Over the last 50-plus years, NADS has been held in 16 states and once in Canada. Here we provide a brief history of the first twenty-seven NADS meetings and highlight the significance the gathering has had in building and supporting the scientific community.