Description
Microbial mats have also been referred to as "algal mats" and "bacterial mats" in older scientific literature. They are a type of biofilm that is large enough to see with the naked eye and robust enough to survive moderate physical stresses. These colonies of bacteria form on surfaces at many types of interface, for example between water and the sediment or rock at the bottom, between air and rock or sediment, between soil and bed-rock, etc. Such interfaces form vertical chemical gradients, i.e. vertical variations in chemical composition, which make different levels suitable for different types of bacteria and thus divide microbial mats into layers, which may be sharply defined or may merge more gradually into each other. A variety of microbes are able to transcend the limits of diffusion by using "nanowires" to shuttle electrons from their metabolic reactions up to two centimetres deep in the sediment - for example, electrons can be transferred from reactions involving hydrogen sulfide deeper within the sediment to oxygen in the water, which acts as an electron acceptor.
The best-known types of microbial mat may be flat laminated mats, which form on approximately horizontal surfaces, and stromatolites, stubby pillars built as the microbes slowly move upwards to avoid being smothered by sediment deposited on them by water. However there are also spherical mats, some on the outside of pellets of rock or other firm material and others inside spheres of sediment.
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