Bacterial Mats With Vents

They colonize environments ranging in temperature from 40 c to 120 c.

Bacterial mats with vents.

Bottom feeders like limpets graze on microbial mats up to three centimeters thick and suspension feeders like mussels feed on bacteria floating in the water. Microbial mats have been found associated with environments such as the benthic planktonic interface of hot springs deep sea vents hypersaline lakes and marine estuaries. 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. Like plants and algae on land and in shallow waters the vent microbes are the primary producers in their food web and are eaten by larger animals.

A few are found as endosymbionts of animals. Chemolithoautotrophic bacteria derive nutrients and energy from the geological activity at hydrothermal vents to. Vent bacteria can synthesize all the compounds they need to live from these nutrients a process called chemosynthesis. The hydrothermal vent microbial community includes all unicellular organisms that live and reproduce in a chemically distinct area around hydrothermal vents these include organisms in the microbial mat free floating cells or bacteria in an endosymbiotic relationship with animals.

By supporting most of the major biogeochemical cycles these mats are largely self sufficient. Microbial filamentous sulfur formation at a 9 n hydrothermal vent site and in shipboard laboratory culture.