Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

What are microbial mats? / G. Gerdes -- Paper from outer space -- on "meteorpapier" and microbial mats / A. Oren -- Microbial mats on the early earth : the Archean rock record / M.M. Walsh -- Gunflint chert microbiota revisited -- neither stromatolites, nor cyanobacteria / W.E. Krumbein -- Paleoenvironmental context of microbial mat-related structures in siliciclastic rocks / P.G. Eriksson et al. -- Microbially related structures in siliciclastic sediment resembling Ediacaran fossils : examples from India, ancient and modern / S. Banerjee et al. -- Osmotrophic biofilms : from modern to ancient / M.D. Brasier et al. -- Microbial mats as a source of biosignatures / E. Chacón -- Molecular investigations and experimental manipulations of microbial mats : a view to paleomicrobial ecosystems / S.J. Green and L.L. Jahnke -- Architecture of archaeal-dominated microbial mats from cold seeps in the Black Sea (Dnjepr Canyon, lower Crimean shelf) / J. Reitner -- Biodynamics of modern marine stromatolites / D.M. Paterson et al. -- Entophysalis mats as environmental regulators / S. Gotubic and R.M.M. Abed -- Diversity and role of cyanobacteria and aerobic heterotrophic microorganisms in carbon cycling in arid cyanobacterial mats / R.M.M. Abed et al. -- Ooid accreting diatom communities from the modern marine stromatolites at Highborne Cay, Bahamas / J. Franks et al. -- Exopolymers (extracellular polymeric substances) in diatom-dominated marine sediment biofilms / G.J.C. Underwood -- Microbial mats from wind flats of the southern Baltic Sea / K. Heyl et al. -- Diazotrophic microbial mats / I. Severin and L.J. Stal -- Architectures of biocomplexity : lichen-dominated soil crusts and mats / M. Grube et al. -- Iron and bacterial biofilm development / O. Avidan et al -- Mats of filamentous and unicellular cyanobacteria in hypersaline environments / A. Oren -- Marine hypersaline Microcoleus-dominated cyanobacterial mats in the saltern at Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur, Mexico : a system-level perspective / D.J. Des Marais -- Environmental dynamics, community structure and function in a hypersaline microbial mat / H.W. Paerl and A.C. Yannarell -- Biogeochemistry of carbon cycling in hypersaline mats : linking the present to the past through biosignatures / P.T. Visscher et al. -- Phototrophic biofilms from Río Tinto, an extreme acidic environment, the prokaryotic component / A. Aguilera et al. -- Fluvial bedform generation by biofilm activity in the Berrocal segment of Río Tinto : acidic biofilms and sedimentation / D.C. Fernández-Remolar et al. -- Cyanobacterial mats of the meltwater ponds on the McMurdo ice shelf (Antarctica) / A.D. Jungblut and B.A. Neilan -- Diversity and ecology of cyanobacterial microflora of Antarctic seepage habitats : comparison of King George Island, Shetland Islands, and James Ross Island, NW Weddell Sea, Antarctica / O. Komárek and J. Komárek -- Microbial mats in Antarctica as models for the search of life on the Jovian moon Europa / S. Dudeja et al. -- Past, present, and future : microbial mats as models for astrobiological research / J.S. Foster and J.M. Mobberley.