Microbial Mats Of Sediment Mixed With Blue Green Cyanobacteria

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Microbial mats of sediment mixed with blue green cyanobacteria.

Microbial mats can be considered a specialized type of biofilm. Which along with chlorophyll a gives cyanobacteria a blue green appearance. This combination of cyanobacterial mat and sediment is a stromatolite. Microbial mats allow fine grained sediments to be deposited in.

They are typically composed of blue green cyanobacteria and sediments. They are an extreme example of an interfacial aquatic habitat in which many microbial groups are laterally tightly compressed into a thin mat of biological activity. A few are found as endosymbionts of animals. The microbial mat consisted in a millimeter layered bio sedimentary structure presenting high organic matter 36 0 0 2 and chlorophyll a 144 1 8 1 µg chl a g dw sediment contents.

While biofilms are typically one to several cell layers thick microbial mats range from several millimeters to a centimeter thick and are vertically stratified into. A microbial mat is a multi layered sheet of microorganisms mainly bacteria and archaea and also just bacterial microbial mats grow at interfaces between different types of material mostly on submerged or moist surfaces but a few survive in deserts. Algal mats are one of many types of microbial mat that forms on the surface of water or rocks.