0 a living thing that gets its food from other plants or animals --
1 a living thing that gets its food from other plants or animals --
It has the ability to eat plants, and afterwards using the chlorophyll granules from the plants to generate energy, turning itself from being a heterotroph into an autotroph.
It is aerobic as well as an anoxic heterotroph, having an atypical respiratory type of metabolism in which oxygen and nitrogen oxides are used simultaneously as terminal electron acceptors.
The sugars and other molecular components produced by the autotrophs are then broken down, releasing stored solar energy, and giving the heterotroph the energy required for survival.
Although there are many examples of trophic mutualisms, the heterotroph is generally a fungus or bacteria.
Predation is a biological interaction where a predator (a heterotroph that is hunting) feeds on its prey (the organism that is attacked).
Trophic mutualism often occurs between an autotroph and a heterotroph.
In any case, their loss to the medium, along with any hydrogen also produced, provides an opportunity for direct coupling of phototrophs and heterotrophs living in the mat.
Wachtershauser (1992) has suggested that primitive surface metabolists preceded cellular life and might even persist in habitats that cannot be occupied by heterotrophs.
