Table 1.

Bacterial isolates used in co-culture experiments with M. vaginatus PCC9802.

Isolate information							Match to known cyanosphere members (% similarity to 16S rRNA gene)
Origin	Strain ID	Taxonomic assignment	Growth on N-free medium	nifH gene detected by PCR	Functional inference	Reference
Cyanosphere associated	O80	Arthrobacter sp.	+	+	Aerobic/saprophytic	[64]	99% (this work)
	METH4	Massilia sp.	+	−	Aerobic/copiotrophic	[62, 65]	98% (this work)
	O64	Bacillus sp.	+	+	Strict or facultative aerobe/copiotroph	[63, 67]	98% [29]
Biocrust associated	S1	Ensifer sp.	+	−	Aerobic, rhizobacteria	[68]	No match
	S14	Paenibacillus sp.	+	+	Copiotrophic, rhizobacteria	[63, 66]	No match
	B17	Geodermatophilus sp.	+	−	Aerobic, rhizobacteria	[67]	No match
	METH2	Streptomyces sp.	+	+	Aerobic/saprophytic	[63, 70]	No match
Non-biocrust associated	K12	Escherichia coli	−	−	Copiotrophic	[71]	No match
	D1	Serratia marcescens	−	−	Copiotrophic	[63, 71]	No match

Taxonomic assignment and functional inference based on BLAST of 16S rRNA gene sequence against the NCBI database. Cyanosphere match indicates isolate 16S rRNA sequence similarity to cyanosphere members detected with culture independent approaches here or elsewhere.