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Biogenic rock varnishes of the negev desert (Israel) an ecological study of iron and manganese transformation by cyanobacteria and fungi

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33The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and said: 34When you have entered the land of Canaan which I give you to occupy, if I inflict a fungous infection upon the house in the land you have occupied, 35its owner shall come and report to the priest that there appears to be a patch of infection on his house. 36The priest shall order the house to be cleared before he goes in to examine the infection, or everything in it will become unclean. After this the priest shall go in to inspect the house. 37If on inspection he finds the patch on the walls consists of greenish or reddish depressions, apparently going deeper than the surface, 38he shall go out of the house, and standing in the entrance, shall put the house in quarantine for seven days. 39On the seventh day he shall come back to inspect the house, and if the patch has spread in the walls, 40he shall order the infected stones to be pulled out and thrown away outside the city in an unclean place. (Levithicus 13, 14, appr. 3000 B.P.)

Summary

The ecology of the microflora, which produces rock varnishes in the Negev is described. It is shown that biogenic rock varnishes may form within relatively short periods (1967–1981) on places where pre-existing varnishes were eliminated. Rock varnishes are thin coatings, mainly composed of Fe and Mn hydroxides and clay material. Biogenic rock varnishes form at places where “microbial weathering fronts”, which destroy the rock substrate, advance extremely slowly or come to stillstand, thus enabling the development of biogenic “protective coatings”. Rock varnish is mainly produced by the activity of often lichenised epi- and endolithic cyanobacteria, chemoorganotrophic bacteria, and fungi, which are sometimes associated with the still debatable Metallogenium symbioticum. In cases, where “microbial weathering fronts” reach harder bedrocks during their progress, the then developing rock varnish plays a protective role for the microflora beneath the varnish in formation. This microflora otherwise would be directly exposed to the harsh desert conditions and could not survive. Biogenic rock varnishes are characteristic examples of a microbial ecosystem, which adapted itself to one of the most extreme environments on this planet, i.e. high irradiation, extremely low water activity, no chances of deplacement upwards or downwards and in addition the highest daily changes in temperature and irradiation and humidity one may observe in natural environments. It seems, that the “solution front community” which is trapped on increasingly harder and resistant rocks has evolved the capacity to protect itself from the harsh environmental conditions by the creation of rock varnish as a kind of armour shielding it from the extremes of environmental stress.

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  1. Geomicrobiology Division, University of Oldenburg, Postfach 2503, D-2900, Oldenburg, FRG

    W. E. Krumbein & K. Jens

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Krumbein, W.E., Jens, K. Biogenic rock varnishes of the negev desert (Israel) an ecological study of iron and manganese transformation by cyanobacteria and fungi. Oecologia 50, 25–38 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00378791

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