Wind flats are found along the Southern Baltic Sea coastline. Microbial mats are the first to colonize these nutrient-poor habitats. They are an entire ecosystem consisting of phototrophic and heterotrophic microorganisms. Organic material is produced and degraded within small temporal and spatial scales. This thesis characterises the wind flat microbial mat as habitat for heterotrophic bacteria, evaluates the hydrolytic enzyme efficiency to degrade the organic material and finally to assesses the ability of the heterotrophic bacteria to adapt themselves to changing organic material load.<eng>
