Subaerial cyanobacteria on the monuments and exterior surface of building facades of Odisha state, India

Subaerial cyanobacteria on the monuments and exterior surface of building facades of Odisha state, India

Subaerial cyanobacteria on exterior surface of monuments and building facades have great importance under extreme conditions to enhance their colonization and diversity. Work was undertaken to assess the cyanobacteria diversity of Western Odisha especially concerning to monuments and building facades, and their comparative analysis. In total fifty subaerial cyanobacterial taxa belonging to 21 different genera of five orders were documented. Out of these 19 taxa were documented as new distributional records from the subaerial habitats of Odisha. Morphologically, 50% of taxa were filamentous heterocystous forms, followed by 26% colonial forms and 24% filamentous non-heterocystous forms. Diversity analysis revealed that cyanobacteria diversity was relatively higher in building facades rather than the monuments which may be resulted due to variation in substrate composition and exposure to climatic factors. A comparative distributional analysis of so far documented cyanobacteria from various subaerial habitats of Odisha revealed a habitat specificity is observed among the cyanobacteria from the monuments which represent biofilms with less common taxa.