The cyanobacterial algal mat, salty lake on the White Sea seaside
A microbial mat is a multi-layered sheet of microorganisms, mainly bacteria and archaea, or bacteria alone. Microbial mats grow at interfaces between different types of material, mostly on submerged or moist surfaces, but a few survive in deserts.[1] A few are found as endosymbionts of animals.
Although only a few centimetres thick at most, microbial mats create a wide range of internal chemical environments, and hence generally consist of layers of microorganisms that can feed on or at least tolerate the dominant chemicals at their level and which are usually of closely related species. In moist conditions mats are usually held together by slimy substances secreted by the microorganisms. In many cases some of the bacteria form tangled webs of filaments which make the mat tougher. The best known physical forms are flat mats and stubby pillars called stromatolites, but there are also spherical forms.
Microbial mats are the earliest form of life on Earth for which there is good fossil evidence, from 3,500 million years ago, and have been the most important members and maintainers of the planet's ecosystems. Originally they depended on hydrothermal vents for energy and chemical "food", but the development of photosynthesis allowed mats to proliferate outside of these environments by utilizing a more widely available energy source, sunlight. The final and most significant stage of this liberation was the development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis, since the main chemical inputs for this are carbon dioxide and water.
As a result, microbial mats began to produce the atmosphere we know today, in which free oxygen is a vital component. At around the same time they may also have been the birthplace of the more complex eukaryote type of cell, of which all multicellular organisms are composed.[2] Microbial mats were abundant on the shallow seabed until the Cambrian substrate revolution, when animals living in shallow seas increased their burrowing capabilities and thus broke up the surfaces of mats and let oxygenated water into the deeper layers, poisoning the oxygen-intolerant microorganisms that lived there. Although this revolution drove mats off soft floors of shallow seas, they still flourish in many environments where burrowing is limited or impossible, including rocky seabeds and shores, and hyper-saline and brackish lagoons. They are found also on the floors of the deep oceans.
Because of microbial mats' ability to use almost anything as "food", there is considerable interest in industrial uses of mats, especially for water treatment and for cleaning up pollution.
^Schieber, J.; Bose, P; Eriksson, P. G.; Banerjee, S.; Sarkar, S.; Altermann, W.; Catuneanu, O. (2007). Atlas of Microbial Mat Features Preserved within the Siliciclastic Rock Record. Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-52859-9. Retrieved 2008-07-01.
^Nobs, Stephanie-Jane; MacLeod, Fraser I.; Wong, Hon Lun; Burns, Brendan P. (2022-05-01). "Eukarya the chimera: eukaryotes, a secondary innovation of the two domains of life?". Trends in Microbiology. 30 (5): 421–431. doi:10.1016/j.tim.2021.11.003. ISSN 0966-842X. PMID 34863611. S2CID 244823103.
A microbialmat is a multi-layered sheet of microorganisms, mainly bacteria and archaea, or bacteria alone. Microbialmats grow at interfaces between different...
The Sippewissett microbialmat is a microbialmat in the Sippewissett Salt Marsh located along the lower eastern Buzzards Bay shoreline of Cape Cod, about...
of microbial aggregate suspension Microbial intelligence – Adaptive behavior by microscopic organisms including bacteria and protists Microbialmat – Multi-layered...
single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from ancient times, such as in Jain scriptures from...
of sedimentary grains in biofilms (specifically microbialmats), through the action of certain microbial lifeforms, especially cyanobacteria. They exhibit...
of microbialmats contain fossils, and Ediacaran fossils are almost always found in beds that contain these microbialmats. Although microbialmats were...
of microbialmats around the edges of the mineral-rich water. The mats produce colors ranging from green to red; the amount of color in the microbial mats...
Sessile organism anchored in mat Animal grazing on mat Animals embedded in mat Animals burrowing just under mat =Microbialmat Firm, layered, anoxic, sulphidic...
are the filamentous species, which often dominate the upper layers of microbialmats found in extreme environments such as hot springs, hypersaline water...
distinct area around hydrothermal vents. These include organisms in the microbialmat, free floating cells, or bacteria in an endosymbiotic relationship with...
deposition, and transportation. The structures commonly form when microbialmats (which may comprise bacteria, fungi, protozoans, archaea or algae) are...
cellulose-based biofilm or microbialmat found floating at the container's air-liquid interface. This bacterial cellulose mat is sometimes called a pellicle...
could have arisen independently on Earth. For about 2,000 million years microbialmats, multi-layered colonies of different bacteria, were the dominant life...
Likhoshway, Yelena V.; Mormile, Melanie R. (April 1, 2013). "The Structure of Microbial Community and Degradation of Diatoms in the Deep Near-Bottom Layer of...
However, biofilms and microbialmats were well developed on Cambrian tidal flats and beaches 500 mya, and microbes forming microbial Earth ecosystems, comparable...
Algal mats are one of many types of microbialmat that forms on the surface of water or rocks. They are typically composed of blue-green cyanobacteria...
has barely been explored even in the beginning of the 21st century. microbialmats Microorganisms make up about 70% of the marine biomass. A microorganism...
defined more precisely in 1988 by Whipps et al. as "a characteristic microbial community occupying a reasonably well-defined habitat which has distinct...
fossils, however, may have originated from non-biological processes. Microbialmats of coexisting bacteria and archaea were the dominant form of life in...
fossil record includes a progression from early biogenic graphite to microbialmat fossils to fossilised multicellular organisms. Existing patterns of...
electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection, anti-microbial for food industry applications. Today, this type of ergonomic mat is commonly used during trade shows for...
started to solidify following the earlier molten Hadean Eon. There are microbialmat fossils such as stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone...
how microbialmats and microbial activity influence the formation of fossils and the preservation of soft tissues. In these studies, microbialmats entomb...
Snottite, also snoticle, is a microbialmat of single-celled extremophilic bacteria which hang from the walls and ceilings of caves and are similar to...
billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in western Greenland and microbialmat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western...
structures created by photosynthetic organisms as they establish a microbialmat on a sediment surface. An important distinction for biogenicity is their...
mineralization include calcareous or siliceous stromatolites and other microbialmats. A more specific type of biologically induced mineralization, remote...
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