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The term is now used in many fields, such as ecology, in describing the food chain. Heterotrophs may be subdivided according to their energy source. If the heterotroph uses chemical energy, it is a chemoheterotroph (e.g., humans and mushrooms). If it uses light for energy, then it is a photoheterotroph (e.g., green non-sulfur bacteria).
Heterotrophic nutrition is a mode of nutrition in which organisms depend upon other organisms for food to survive. They can't make their own food like Green plants. Heterotrophic organisms have to take in all the organic substances they need to survive. All animals, certain types of fungi, and non-photosynthesizing plants are heterotrophic.
Photoheterotrophs generate ATP using light, in one of two ways: [6] [7] they use a bacteriochlorophyll-based reaction center, or they use a bacteriorhodopsin.The chlorophyll-based mechanism is similar to that used in photosynthesis, where light excites the molecules in a reaction center and causes a flow of electrons through an electron transport chain (ETS).
Organotrophs use organic compounds as electron/hydrogen donors. Lithotrophs use inorganic compounds as electron/hydrogen donors.. The electrons or hydrogen atoms from reducing equivalents (electron donors) are needed by both phototrophs and chemotrophs in reduction-oxidation reactions that transfer energy in the anabolic processes of ATP synthesis (in heterotrophs) or biosynthesis (in autotrophs).
Ecosystem respiration is the production portion of carbon dioxide in an ecosystem's carbon flux, while photosynthesis typically accounts for the majority of the ecosystem's carbon consumption. [3] Carbon is cycled throughout the ecosystem as various factors continue to uptake or release the carbon in different circumstances.
Plants and algae do not usually eat other organisms, but pull nutrients from the soil or the ocean and manufacture their own food using photosynthesis. For this reason, they are called primary producers. In this way, it is energy from the sun that usually powers the base of the food chain. [4]
Microbial metabolism is the means by which a microbe obtains the energy and nutrients (e.g. carbon) it needs to live and reproduce.Microbes use many different types of metabolic strategies and species can often be differentiated from each other based on metabolic characteristics.
Photosynthesis (/ ˌ f oʊ t ə ˈ s ɪ n θ ə s ɪ s / FOH-tə-SINTH-ə-sis) [1] is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabolism.