What is "lithophilic"

Usage examples of "lithophilic".

The limestone appeared in all the hues I'd seen in the city, zebra-striping the landscape in distinctly ungeological patterns, governed by the diffusion of different subspecies of lithophilic bacteria.

Still, whether this tunnel had formed unbidden at the intersection of certain levels of marker-chemical gradients, because lithophilic bacteria had noticed the cue and switched on all the right genes-or whether they'd had to be told more forcefully, by a person tipping a bucketload of primer onto the surface-it beat attacking the rock for a month or two with a diamond-coated drill.

Entropy should have favored the solid reef-rock banks dissolving into this sludge and washing away-but it favored more strongly the flow of energy from the sun into the lithophilic bacteria infesting the coral debris, which labored to stitch the loose aggregate of limestone into the denser polymer-mineral matrix around it.