Morphological determination of the phototrophic community composition of biological soil crusts in coastal sand dunes in northern Germany

This dataset comprises the microbial community composition of biological soil crusts in north-German sand dunes. For this we obtained enrichment cultures of phototrophic microorganisms, by placing fragments of biocrusts of the same Petri dishes as used for sequencing, in Petri dishes with Bold Basal (1N BBM) agarized medium (Bischoff and Bold 1963). Cultures were grown under standard laboratory conditions: with a 12-hour alteration of light and dark phases and irradiation of 25 μmol photons m-2 s-1 at a temperature 20 ± 5 ºС. Microscopic study of these raw cultures began in the third week of cultivation. Morphological examinations were performed using Olympus BX53 light microscope with Noma…