Detritivore

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Detritivore

Detritivores, also known as detritus feeders or saprophages, are heterotroph

Heterotroph

A heterotroph is an organism that organic compound substrates to get its Energy#Chemical energy for its life cycle. This contrasts with autotrophs such as plants which are able to directly use sources of energy such as light to produce organic substrates from inorganic carbon dioxide....
s that obtain nutrient

Nutrient

A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment....
s by consuming detritus

Detritus

Detritus is a biological term used to describe dead or waste organic material.Detritus may also refer to:* Detritus , a geological term used to describe the particles of rock produced by weathering...
(decomposing organic matter). By doing so, they contribute to decomposition

Decomposition

Decomposition refers to the process by which tissues of dead organisms break down into simpler forms of matter. Such a breakdown of dead organisms is essential for new growth and development of living organisms because it recycles the finite chemical constituents and frees up the limited physical space in the biome....
and the nutrient cycles.

Detritivores are an important aspect of many ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical factors of the environment....
s. They can live on any soil with an organic component, and even live in marine ecosystems where they are termed interchangeably with bottom feeder

Bottom feeder

A demersal fish is a fish that feeds on or near the bottom of the ocean or a deep lake in the demersal zone. Demersal fish are also known as bottom feeders, groundfish or Benthic zone fish, and may be contrasted with Pelagic zone....
s.

Typical detritivorous animals include millipede

Millipede

Millipedes are arthropods that have two pairs of arthropod leg per segment . Each segment that has two pairs of legs is a result of two single segments fused together as one....
s, woodlice

Woodlouse

Woodlice are crustaceans with a rigid, segmented, long exoskeleton and fourteen jointed limbs. They form the suborder Oniscidea within the order Isopoda, with over 3,000 known species....
, dung flies

Scathophagidae

The Scathophagidae is a small family of Muscoidea which are often known as "Dung-flies" although this name is not appropriate except for a few species of the genus Scathophaga which do indeed pass their larval stages in animal dung....
, many terrestrial worm

Worm

A worm is a common name given to a diverse group of invertebrate animals that have a long, soft body and no legs. There are hundreds of thousands of species of worms, 2,700 of these are earthworms....
s, burying beetle

Burying beetle

Burying beetles or sexton beetles are the best-known members of the family Silphidae . Burying beetles are true to their name. Most of these beetles are black with red markings on the elytron ....
s, some sedentary polychaete

Polychaete

The Polychaeta or polychaetes are a class of annelid worms, generally marine. Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made of chitin....
s such as amphitrite

Amphitrite

In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite was a sea-goddess. Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became merely the consort of Poseidon, and was further diminished by poets to a symbolic representation of the sea....
, terebellids

Terebellida

Terebellida make up a suborder of the "bristle worm" class . Together with the Sabellida, the Spionida and a some enigmatic families of unclear relations , they make up the order Canalipalpata, one of the three main clades of polychaetes....
and fiddler crabs.

Many species of bacteria

Bacteria

The Bacteria are a large group of unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals....
, fungi and protist

Protist

Protists ; eukaryote microorganisms. Historically, protists were treated as the kingdom Protista but this group is no longer recognized in modern taxonomy....
s, unable to ingest discrete lumps of matter, instead live by absorbing and metabolising on a molecular scale.

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Encyclopedia

Detritivores, also known as detritus feeders or saprophages, are heterotroph

Heterotroph

Nutrient

A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment....
s by consuming detritus

Detritus

Decomposition

Ecosystem

Bottom feeder

Millipede

Millipedes are arthropods that have two pairs of arthropod leg per segment . Each segment that has two pairs of legs is a result of two single segments fused together as one....
s, woodlice

Woodlouse

Scathophagidae

Worm

Burying beetle

Polychaete

Amphitrite

Terebellida

Bacteria

Protist

Scavenger

Scavenging, or necrophagy, is a carnivorous feeding behaviour in which a predator consumes corpses or carrion that were not killed to be eaten by the predator or others of its species....
s are typically not thought to be detritivores, as they generally consume larger quantities of organic matter. Coprovores

Coprophagia

Coprophagia is the consumption of feces, from the Greek language ??p??? copros and fa?e?? phagein . Many animal species practice coprophagia as a matter of course; other species do not normally consume feces but may do so under unusual conditions....
are also usually treated separately as they exhibit a slightly different feeding behaviour. The eating of wood, whether live or dead, is known as xylophagy

Xylophagy

Xylophagy is a term used in ecology to describe the habits of an herbivorous animal whose diet consists primarily of wood. The word derives from Greek language ????f???? "eating wood", from ????? "wood" + f??e?? "to eat" and it was an ancient Greek name for a kind of a worm....
.

Ecology

In food webs, detritivores generally play the role of decomposers. Detritivores are often eaten by consumers

Heterotroph

Energy flow

In ecology, energy flow refers to the flow of energy through a food chain.In following energy flow in an ecosystem, ecologists seek to quantify the relative importance of different component species and feeding relationships....
and biogeochemical cycles.

Many detritivores live in mature woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is an area covered in trees, usually at low density, forming an open habitat, allowing sunlight to penetrate between the trees, and limiting shade....
, though the term can be applied to certain bottom-feeders in wet environments

Benthos

Benthos are the organisms which live on, in, or near the seabed, also known as the benthic zone. They live in or near marine sedimentary environments, from tidal pools along the Intertidal zone, out to the continental shelf, and then down to the Abyssal zone....
. These organisms play a crucial role in benthic ecosystems, forming essential food chain

Food chain

Food chains, also called, food networks and/or trophic social networks, describe the eating relationships between species within an ecosystem....
s and participating in the nitrogen cycle

Nitrogen cycle

The nitrogen cycle is the biogeochemical cycle that describes the transformations of nitrogen and nitrogen-containing compounds in nature. It is a cycle which includes Gas components....
.

Fungi, acting as decomposers, are important in today's terrestrial environment. During the Carboniferous period, fungi and bacteria had yet to evolve the capacity to digest lignin

Lignin

Lignin or lignen is a complex chemical compound most commonly derived from wood, and an integral part of the secondary cell walls of plants and some algae....
, and so large deposits of dead plant tissue accumulated during this period, later becoming the fossil fuel

Fossil fuel

Fossil fuels or mineral fuels are fossil source fuels, that is, carbon or hydrocarbons found in the earth?s Crust .Fossil fuel range from volatile materials with low carbon:hydrogen ratios like methane, to liquid petroleum to nonvolatile materials composed of almost pure carbon, like anthracite coal....
s.

By feeding

Feeding

Feeding is the process by which organisms, typically animals, obtain food. Terminology often uses either the suffix -vore from Latin vorare, meaning 'to devour', or phagy, from Greek fa?e??, meaning 'to eat'....
on sediments directly to extract the organic component, some detritivores accidentally concentrate toxic pollutant

Pollutant

A pollutant is a waste material that pollutes air, water or soil.Three factors determine the severity of a pollutant: its chemical nature, the concentration and the persistence....
s.

Saprophytes

'Saprophyte' (-phyte meaning 'plant') is a botanical term that is now considered obsolete. There are no truly saprotrophic organisms that are embryophytes, and fungi and bacteria are no longer placed in the Plant Kingdom

Plant

Plants are Life organisms belonging to the Kingdom Plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae....
. Plants that were once considered saprophytes, such as non-photosynthetic orchids and monotropes, are now known to be parasites on fungi. These species are now termed myco-heterotrophs.