As discussed in class, there are three types of microbial colonization into desert pavements: epilith, endolith, and hypolith. Speculate what physical, chemical, biological,and climatic factors determine which colonization is predominant?
Epilith grows on the surface of the rocks.
An endolith is an organism (archaeon, bacterium, fungus, lichen, alga or amoeba) that lives inside the rock, coral, animal shells, or in the pores between mineral grains of a rock.
a hypolith is a photosynthetic organism, and an extremophile, that lives underneath rocks in climatically extreme deserts such as Cornwallis Island and Devon Island in the Canadian high Arctic.
Thus in deserts, in the rocks i.e in the extremely dry conditions and at very high temperatures epilith founds its way on the surface of the rocks, endolith can grow within the pres of the rocks and hypolith grows under the rocks.
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