Cyanobacteria Boring Limestones in Freshwater Settings—Their Pioneering Role in Sculpturing Pebbles and Carbonate Dissolution

In freshwater lakes and rivers, cyanobacteria belonging to the family Leptolyngbyaceae bore > 1 mm deep into limestone pebbles by dissolving carbonate at the tip of their 3–8 μm-thick filaments. The abundance of these borings decreases downward while it is so high at the rock surface that micrometric debris is formed. Moreover, the disintegrated material on the pebbles' surface can be easily removed, for instance, when pebbles are grinding against each other due to wave or current action or when insect larvae settle and scratch loosened grains from the surface while constructing their cases. After a larvae case has been abandoned, it decays with time and the surface benath it is colonized again by boring cyanobacteria. These processes can alternate repeatedly and lead to a sculptured appearance of the pebbles, especially because insect larvae tend to colonize already existing depressions where they are better protected from predation and where they can access suspended food more easily. In the sculptures entrenched by insect larvae, larvae of byssate bivalves like Dreissena polymorpha may settle. When growing, these bivalves also remove loosened carbonate from the bored surface. Thus, boring cyanobacteria play a pioneering, preconditioning role in the morphological evolution of limestone (pebble) surfaces by transforming an initially hard substrate into a firm- to softground that is subsequently colonized and structured by animals. Consequently, sculptured pebbles are the product of multiphase, preconditioned bioerosion. Ultimately, the synergistic effects of these bioerosive processes result in the dissolution of carbonate leading to a maximum take-up of approximately 0.5–0.8 kg CO₂ per square meter and year, as a preliminary estimate indicates.