Examples of heterotroph in the following topics:
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- Autotrophs (producers) synthesize their own energy, creating organic materials that are utilized as fuel by heterotrophs (consumers).
- Energy is acquired by living things in three ways: photosynthesis, chemosynthesis, and the consumption and digestion of other living or previously-living organisms by heterotrophs.
- Heterotrophs function as consumers in the food chain; they obtain energy in the form of organic carbon by eating autotrophs or other heterotrophs.
- Unlike autotrophs, heterotrophs are unable to synthesize their own food.
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- All animals require a source of food and are, therefore, heterotrophic: ingesting other living or dead organisms.
- As heterotrophs, animals may be carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, or parasites .
- All animals are heterotrophs that derive energy from food.
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- Other protists are heterotrophic and consume organic materials (such as other organisms) to obtain nutrition.
- Amoebas and some other heterotrophic protist species ingest particles by a process called phagocytosis in which the cell membrane engulfs a food particle and brings it inward, pinching off an intracellular membranous sac, or vesicle, called a food vacuole .
- Subtypes of heterotrophs, called saprobes, absorb nutrients from dead organisms or their organic wastes.
- Some protists function as mixotrophs, obtaining nutrition by photoautotrophic or heterotrophic routes, depending on whether sunlight or organic nutrients are available.
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- Other organisms, such as animals, fungi, and most other bacteria, are termed heterotrophs ("other feeders") because they must rely on the sugars produced by photosynthetic organisms for their energy needs.
- Those carbohydrates are the energy source that heterotrophs use to power the synthesis of ATP via respiration.
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- This supergroup includes heterotrophic predators, photosynthetic species, and parasites.
- Euglenozoans includes parasites, heterotrophs, autotrophs, and mixotrophs, ranging in size from 10 to 500 µm.
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- Stramenophiles include photosynthetic marine algae and heterotrophic protists such as diatoms, brown and golden algae, and oomycetes.
- A subgroup of chromalveolates, the stramenopiles, also referred to as heterokonts, includes photosynthetic marine algae and heterotrophic protists.
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- Fungi are unicellular or multicellular thick-cell-walled heterotroph decomposers that eat decaying matter and make tangles of filaments.
- Like animals, fungi are heterotrophs: they use complex organic compounds as a source of carbon, rather than fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as do some bacteria and most plants.
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- A good example of this connection is the exchange of carbon between autotrophs and heterotrophs.
- Heterotrophs acquire the high-energy carbon compounds from the autotrophs by consuming them and breaking them down by respiration to obtain cellular energy, such as ATP.
- Thus, there is a constant exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the autotrophs (which need the carbon) and the heterotrophs (which need the oxygen).
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- Glucose enters heterotrophic cells in two ways.
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- Finally, in the process of breaking down food, called cellular respiration, heterotrophs release needed energy and produce "waste" in the form of CO2 gas.