Heterotrophic nutrition is a mode of

nutrition Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient ...

in which organisms depend upon other organisms for food to survive. They can't make their own food like

Green plants Viridiplantae (literally "green plants") are a clade of eukaryotic organisms that comprise approximately 450,000–500,000 species and play important roles in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. They are made up of the green algae, which a ...

. Heterotrophic organisms have to take in all the organic substances they need to survive. All

animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage ...

s, certain types of

fungi A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately fr ...

, and non-photosynthesizing plants are

heterotroph A heterotroph (; ) is an organism that cannot produce its own food, instead taking nutrition from other sources of organic carbon, mainly plant or animal matter. In the food chain, heterotrophs are primary, secondary and tertiary consumers, but ...

ic. In contrast, green plants,

red algae Red algae, or Rhodophyta (, ; ), are one of the oldest groups of eukaryotic algae. The Rhodophyta also comprises one of the largest phyla of algae, containing over 7,000 currently recognized species with taxonomic revisions ongoing. The majority ...

brown algae Brown algae (singular: alga), comprising the class Phaeophyceae, are a large group of multicellular algae, including many seaweeds located in colder waters within the Northern Hemisphere. Brown algae are the major seaweeds of the temperate and p ...

, and

cyanobacteria Cyanobacteria (), also known as Cyanophyta, are a phylum of gram-negative bacteria that obtain energy via photosynthesis. The name ''cyanobacteria'' refers to their color (), which similarly forms the basis of cyanobacteria's common name, bl ...

are all

autotroph An autotroph or primary producer is an organism that produces complex organic compounds (such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) using carbon from simple substances such as carbon dioxide,Morris, J. et al. (2019). "Biology: How Life Wo ...

s, which use

photosynthesis Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities. Some of this chemical energy is stored in ...

to produce their own food from sunlight. Some

may be saprotrophic, meaning they will extracellularly secrete enzymes onto their food to be broken down into smaller, soluble molecules which can diffuse back into the fungus.

Description

All

eukaryote Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the three domains of life. Bacter ...

s except for green plants are unable to manufacture their own food: They obtain food from other organisms. This mode of nutrition is also known as heterotrophic nutrition. All heterotrophs (except blood and gut

parasite Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson h ...

s) have to convert solid food into soluble compounds which are capable of being absorbed (digestion).Then the soluble products of digestion for the organism are being broken down for the release of energy (respiration). All heterotrophs depend on autotrophs for their nutrition. Heterotrophic organisms have only four types of nutrition.

Footnotes

References

{{modelling ecosystems Trophic ecology Biological interactions