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Deposition Of Calcium Carbonate In Karst Caves: Role Of Bacteria In Stiffe's Cave, Claudia Ercole, Paola Cacchio, Giorgio Cappuccio, Aldo Lepidi

International Journal of Speleology

Bacteria make a significant contribution to the accumulation of carbonate in severa! natural habitats where large amounts of carbonates are deposited. However, the role played by microbial communities in speleothem formation (stalactites, stalagmites etc.) in caves is still unclear. In bacteria carbonate is formed by autotrophic pathways, which deplete CO₂ from the environment, and by heterotrophic pathways, leading to active or passive precipitation. We isolated cultivable heterotrophic microbial strains, able to induce CaCO₃ precipitation in vitro, from samples taken from speleothems in the galleries of Stiffe’s cave, L’Aquila, Italy. We found a large number of bacteria in the …