“…Biofilms, referred to as "cities of microbes" (Nikolaev & Plakunov, 2007;Watnick & Kolter, 2000) comprising bacteria, fungi, and algae (Lock, 1993), are known to affect and be affected by fine sediment dynamics (Aspray, Holden, Ledger, Mainstone, & Brown, 2017;Cheng, Fang, Lai, Huang, & Dey, 2017;Fang, Chen, Huang, & He, 2017;Madsen, 2011). Although the important function biofilms fulfill in wastewater processing has long been known, it was not until more recently that research began to focus on their role in the processing and fate of fine sediment-bound contaminants in freshwater ecosystems (Gainswin, House, Leadbeater, Armitage, & Patten, 2006;Garwood, Hill, & Law, 2013;Horton, Walton, Spurgeon, Lahive, & Svendsen, 2017;Lu, Wan, Li, Shao, & Wu, 2016;Rummel, Jahnke, Gorokhova, Kühnel, & Schmitt-Jansen, 2017). The matrix of the biofilm microenvironment is comprised mostly of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) (Flemming, Neu, & Wozniak, 2007;Wingender, Neu, & Flemming, 1999), which are synthesized by the biofilm microbial community.…”