Table 1. Distanced based linear model (DISTLM) on elemental analysis.

Variablea	Fb	Pc	Cumul.d
Mo	15.29	0.001	31.66%
Fe	4.7935	0.001	40.57%
Mn	3.0769	0.001	45.93%
Mg	2.2503	0.001	49.71%

Molybdenum, iron, manganese and magnesium accounted for 50% of the overal variances in the microbial structure between smooth and pustular mats.

^aFour major elements which were significantly (p < 0.05) correlated with the variances between microbial communities of smooth and pustular mats, using non-parametric multivariate regression

^bPseudo F-values (F).

^cP-values (P).

^dCumulative percentage of variance explained