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Diatoms are an important group of eukaryotic microalgae with a siliceous cell wall, the frustule. Diatoms are traditionally subdivided into two sub-classes, namely centric diatoms with a radial symmetry and pennate diatoms with a bilateral symmetry. These two groups of diatoms have usually biotope “preferences”, with centric diatoms dominating the pelagic environments, whereas the benthic habitats are mostly inhabited by pennate diatoms. The question of how the morphology of diatoms (centric versus pennate) or the ultrastructure of the frustule could be driven by ecological constrains remains unclear. For example, some studies have suggested that the structure of the diatom frustule could play a role in the light harvesting performances. In this work, we studied the variations of the diatom frustules nanostructure in several benthic and pelagic species inhabiting the same coastal ecosystem, particularly the …