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Organisms are able to detect nutrients through taste or other forms of nutrient sensing, allowing them to regulate nutrient intake. [16] Optimal foraging theory is a model that explains foraging behavior as a cost–benefit analysis in which an animal must maximize the gain of nutrients while minimizing the amount of time and energy spent foraging.
The remaining elements found in living things are primarily metals that play a role in determining protein structure. Examples include iron, essential to hemoglobin; and magnesium, essential to chlorophyll. Some elements are essential only to certain taxonomic groups of organisms, particularly the prokaryotes.
A nutrient is a substance used by an organism to survive, grow and reproduce. The requirement for dietary nutrient intake applies to animals , plants , fungi and protists . Nutrients can be incorporated into cells for metabolic purposes or excreted by cells to create non-cellular structures such as hair , scales , feathers , or exoskeletons .
Some nutrients can be stored – the fat-soluble vitamins – while others are required more or less continuously. Poor health can be caused by a lack of required nutrients, or for some vitamins and minerals, too much of a required nutrient. Essential nutrients cannot be synthesized by the body, and must be obtained from food.
The four organogenic elements, namely carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen , that comprise roughly 96% of the human body by weight, [7] are usually not considered as minerals (nutrient). In fact, in nutrition, the term "mineral" refers more generally to all the other functional and structural elements found in living organisms.
Organic matter is common throughout the ecosystem and is cycled through decomposition processes by soil microbial communities that are crucial for nutrient availability. [5] After degrading and reacting, it can move into soil and mainstream water via waterflow. Organic matter provides nutrition to living organisms.
A general name for this class of material is biological materials. Biomolecules are an important element of living organisms, those biomolecules are often endogenous, [2] produced within the organism [3] but organisms usually need exogenous biomolecules, for example certain nutrients, to survive.
The living factors of the planet can be referred to collectively as the biosphere. All the nutrients — such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur — used in ecosystems by living organisms are a part of a closed system; therefore, these chemicals are recycled instead of being lost and replenished constantly such as in an open ...