In nature there are organisms - bacteria, fungi, plants, animals - fed ready-made organic compounds.The source of the carbon particles for them are dead, or the waste products of living creatures of nature.These creatures are called "saprophytes".What it is?Let's try to find out in this article.
Origin of name The name of this group of organisms is derived from two Greek words: "rotten" and "plant".From here you can literally understand the meaning of the concept.Saprophytes used in food waste products of other organisms, tissue plant and animal origin, often - dead.
role saprophytes
The role of these creatures in the nature of the global cycle of matter.Every living organism ever to die.That's how nature.Many saprophytes intended for disposal of dead tissue.Without them, the biosphere would be simply drowned in their own waste, and the whole earth would be strewn with waste and waste products of various organisms - living and dead.Saprophytes perform a role in the nature of janitors that clean the place for a new life.Also they decompose organic tissue components which are then used by other organisms to their own power supply and functioning.
What bacteria called saprophytes?
total number of inhabitants of the planet Earth is truly innumerable bacteria, it does not give an accurate calculation.Microorganisms, in terms of classification in biology - the most numerous kingdom.Most of the existing bacteria are saprophytes.
main functions
bacteria-saprophytes: what is it?Their mission - to decompose organic matter in aquatic environments and soil, to participate in the mineralization cycle of chemical elements.Azotobacter, for example, take an active part in the process of nitrogen fixation.Some - the major units in the conversion of carbon, sulfur, phosphorus.And other microorganisms "help" the man cooking the food.After all, the process of lactic fermentation depends on the saprophytes.Sour cream, cottage cheese, cheese, fermented baked milk, pickles, alcohol beverages - those products that no bacteria simply could not exist.
Blue-green algae
These cyanobacteria are involved in the production of oxygen.Scientists believe that these ancient bacteria started forming billions of years ago, the Earth's atmosphere.After all, there were not trees and other plants that produce oxygen through photosynthesis.A bacterium existed.Even now - in view of their large numbers - their share in the production of this gas is essential.
mushrooms and plants saprophitic
In the kingdom of mushrooms also have representatives in this category: small and medium, even large.They are used in food paluyu leaves, humus, trunks and twigs, dung, charcoal, feathers and down of birds, animal dander.In general - any organic matter, available to them.For example, honey agaric white lozhnoopenok sulfur-yellow, hairy beetle, aspen, birch and many others are saprophytes.Many wild mushrooms come from higher plants (trees, shrubs) in symbiosis, producing all kinds of crop residues and animal manure needed for plant nutrition.
great importance (often - not very pleasant) have all kinds of microscopic fungi, saprophytes.They are often found in foods, transforming them their vital functions, creating further as edible and inedible products.Moldy bread and sour jam, fermented fruit juice, rotten apple - their "hands" thing.The mineral - Kombucha, Indian rice, fungal fermentation in the production of alcohol.
in the plant kingdom and are saprophytes.What it is?These flora absent usually photosynthesis elements (pigments) and the process is carried out due to adaptability to the power consumption of the fungi, for example.The impossibility of photosynthesis may be partial.For example, some species of orchids only to some extent depend on the fungi, but may additionally perform photosynthesis.
Such plants are called mikogeterotrofami.They include more than 400 of all kinds.
Animal saprophytes.What it is?
Among the fauna also have similar organisms.For example, mites saprophytes (family of arachnids).These arthropods have depending directly from other organisms, but in the finished organic compounds still need.They use their power decaying plant or animal tissue.Saprophytes are more than 150 kinds of dust mites, some of them are considered to be allergenic.They can be seen only under a microscope, as their minimal size (average - 0.2 mm).Lifetime animal - about four months.During this time the female mite time to defer up to 300 eggs.But just one gram of dust can "lodge" to a few thousand of these organisms.The food they eat flake layer of the skin of people who are present in abundance, where people sleep (according to science, man can throw in the year to 700 grams of dead skin particles, and they feed on dust mites, saprophytes).
