What are the main inorganic nutrients necessary for the success of marine autotrophs?
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I am working on this problem without knowing if you even still need this info. But it is interesting. It seems the most important inorganic nutrient is sunlight!\n\nHere's a quote:\n\nAutotrophs absorb sunlight energy and transfer inorganic mineral nutrients into organic molecules. The autotrophs of the marine environment include algae and flowering plants and in the deep sea are chemosynthetic bacteria that harness inorganic chemical energy to build organic matter...AUTOTROPHIC NUTRITION..supply food molecules to organisms that can't absorb sunlight.\n\nfrom:http://darter.ocps.net/classroom/klenk/Ecology.htm\n\nHere's another link relative to the subject, I think:\nhttp://pubmedcentral.com/articlerender.fcgi?artid=18283\n\nThe oceanic distribution of cadmium follows closely that of major algal nutrients such as phosphate. The reasons for this “nutrient-like” distribution are unclear, however, because cadmium is not generally believed to have a biological function. Herein, we provide evidence of a biological role for Cd in the marine diatom Thalassiosira weissflogii under conditions of low zinc, typical of the marine environment. Addition of Cd to Zn-limited cultures enhances the growth rate of T. weissflogii, particularly at low pCO2. This increase in growth rate is reflected in increased levels of cellular carbonic anhydrase (CA) activity, although the levels of TWCA1, the major intracellular Zn-requiring isoform of CA in T. weissflogii, remain low. 109Cd label comigrates with a protein band that shows CA activity and is distinct from TWCA1 on native PAGE of radiolabeled T. weissflogii cell lysates. The levels of the Cd protein are modulated by CO2 in a manner that is consistent with a role for this enzyme in carbon acquisition. Purification of the CA-active fraction leads to the isolation of a Cd-containing protein of 43 kDa. It is now clear that T. weissflogii expresses a Cd-specific CA, which, particularly under conditions of Zn limitation, can replace the Zn enzyme TWCA1 in its carbon-concentrating mechanism.\n\nMarine microorganisms are largely responsible for the cycling, and therefore the distribution, of many nutrients in the sea, and it is the availability of these nutrients that, in turn, controls oceanic primary production. This relationship is as true of essential trace elements as it is of major nutrients. In oceanic systems, the water column distribution of many biologically important trace metals is thus similar to that of the major nutrients: phosphate, nitrate, and silicate. At the surface, where photosynthetic activity depletes algal nutrients, such metals are present at extremely low concentrations, presumably as the result of biological uptake. Like those of major nutrients, these metal concentrations increase at depth because of decomposition of organic matter and remineralization.\n\nZinc, which has many known biological functions (1), is a good example of a metal that follows this type of nutrient-like profile. Cadmium, however, which is generally thought to be universally deleterious to living organisms, also has a nutrient-like profile (2); its concentration is so well correlated to that of phosphate that the accumulation of Cd in the fossilized tests of marine invertebrates is used as a measure of past nutrient concentrations in the sea (3). In the absence of a demonstrated biological function for Cd, it has been widely thought that abiotic processes, such as adsorption onto organic particles, modulate the distribution of this metal. Recently, it has been proposed that the depletion of Cd from surface seawater is caused by its use by marine phytoplankton (4). Under conditions of Zn limitation, Cd enhances the growth rate of some marine phytoplankton in culture (4–6), and it thus seems that Cd may replace Zn in some essential biochemical function.\n\nIn Thalassiosira weissflogii, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase (CA) constitutes a major use of cellular Zn (7), and the expression of TWC
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Fertilizers typically provide, in varying proportions, the three major plant nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), the secondary plant nutrients (calcium, sulfur, magnesium), and sometimes trace elements (or micronutrients) with a role in plant nutrition: boron, manganese, iron, zinc, copper and molybdenum.\n\nBasically - fertilizers give plants the food and "plant vitamines and minerals" that they need to grow.
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>>>>I know iron is needed to produce chlorophyll. \n\n\nNo, you don't. Really.
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None that I know of. Anaerobic bacteria do not need oxygen to survive, and usually die in the presence of oxygen.\n\nTo survive, anaerobic bacteria use two types of repiration to survive: Fermentation and anaerobic repiration, both of which utilize glucose. \n\nThe article does mention that there are times the conversion of pyruvate to acetaldehyde generates CO2 and the conversion of acetaldehyde to ethanol regenerates NAD+. It doesn't mention which bacterium can facilitate said process.
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A) \n\nEuglena is a facultative autotroph.
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Phosphate is an essential nutrient to plants, including algae. In bodies of freshwater it is often a limiting nutrient, meaning that the availability of phosphate is what controls the amount of plant life in the water. When this balance is upset by human input of phosphates either from fertilizer runoff, or once common phosphate based detergents (now outlawed in the US), there are algal blooms. These algal blooms soon die off and the resulting decomposition process will often consume all available oxygen in the water, killing fish and other aquatic life. This is known as eutrophication. Eutrophication also happens naturally over thousands of years and is part of the natural aging process of a lake.\n\nPhosphate moves in a cycle like many other nutrients. It comes from erosion of rocks and is picked up from solution by plants. From the plants it moves up through the food chain, or may return directly to soil or water through decay of the plant. It accumulates in sediments, which eventually become rock and the cycle is repeated.
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Chemotrophs are organisms that obtain energy by the oxidation of electron donating molecules in their environments. These molecules can be organic (organotrophs) or inorganic (lithotrophs). The chemotroph designation is in contrast to phototrophs which utilize solar energy. Chemotrophs can be either autotrophic or heterotrophic.\n\nChemoautotrophs (or chemotrophic autotroph), in addition to deriving energy from chemical reactions, synthesize all necessary organic compounds from carbon dioxide. Chemoautotrophs generally only use inorganic energy sources. Most are bacteria or archaea that live in hostile environments such as deep sea vents and are the primary producers in such ecosystems. Scientists believe that the first organisms to inhabit Earth were chemoautotrophs that produced oxygen as a by-product and later evolved into both aerobic, animal-like organisms and photosynthetic, plant-like organisms. Chemoautotrophs generally fall into four groups: methanogens, halophiles, sulfur reducers, and thermoacidophiles. \nChemoheterotrophs (or chemotrophic heterotrophs) must ingest organic building blocks that they are incapable of creating on their own. Most chemoheterotrophs derive energy from organic molecules like glucose. \nThe names of these primary nutritional groups are built from Greek roots. "Chemo" means "chemical" and "troph" means "nourishment". "Auto" means "self" and "hetero" means "other".
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1)water\n2)sun light\n3)Mineral nutrients\n4)Oxygen\n5)CO2\n6)Optimum Temperature\n7)Less Competition\n8)Ecological adaptations\n9)Soil or good substratum\n10)Role in local ecosystem
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B, Algal blooms first create some dissolved oxygen, but then they over populate since they're free floating, block the sun, use all the DO and the fish die. HA! I will not fail that AP bio exam!
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Something that requires water in order to become a true Base\n\ne.g. CaO + H2O -> Ca(OH)2
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E.\nBecause bacteria can obtain nutrition chemically, they can live in conditions that no-one thought possible, for example in volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean.
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The sun provides energy to living organisms of the Earth.  There are autrophs and heterotrophs.  Autotrophs (like plants) use sunlight to turn CO2 and Water, which cannot be further oxidized as fuel into GLucose, which can be burned by a cell as a source of fuel.  Low rung food chain heterotrophs eat autotrophs (these are herbivores) and get their calories (food is a source of chemical potential energy) from the glucose (and some other chemicals) made by autotrophs.  \n\nHigher level heterotrophs eat the lower level heterotrophs, getting their calories from proteins and fats of the herbivores they are eating.  The calories contained in the proteins and fats of the herbivores is derived from the calories of the autotrophs.  In essence, the calories from food on this planet are derived from energy from sunlight that plants have converted to chemical form.
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Plant-like protists like algae, seaweed, and kelp for instance all play an important role in the marine food chain. Cyanobacteria, from which later plant-like protist life stemmed did help to oxygenate the atmosphere but phytoplankton, which is this plant-like protist life, forms the food base of the marine food chain according to my sources.
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That's a better question!\n\nHmmm....Let's see....Gee, that's a tough one!  Osmosis requires a concentration gradient, but since seawater is more concentrated than freshwater, you would expect the concentration gradients to be opposite, and you would expect that osmosis would work in one and active transport would be required in the other.\n\nHmmm.....let's see now....what could it be?\n\nCould it be something that is more concentrated in seawater AND freswater than it is in the cell?  Hmmm....let's see, what could that be?\n\nOH!  I'VE GOT IT!!\n\nThink hard, now, and you'll get it, too!  The answer is a little unexpected!  (you might even have to look in your textbook or class notes...hope you weren't sleeping that day!)
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Heterotrophic organisms like us and other animals, like reptiles and mammals, can't make their own food;\nParasites, like tapeworm, cuscuta etc. take it from other 'host' organisms;\nAnd saprophytes, like mushrooms, feed on dead and decaying organisms.\nOnly autotrophes can make their own food, i.e., only green plants and bacteria containing chlorophyll, called autotrophic bacteria.\nHope this answers your question.
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Corals (class Anthozoa), which include sea anemones (order Actiniaria), are gastrovascular marine cnidarians (phylum Cnidaria) existing as small sea anemone-like polyps, typically forming colonies of many individuals. The group includes the important reef builders known as hermatypic corals, found in tropical oceans, and belonging to the subclass Zoantharia of order Scleractinia (formerly Madreporaria). The latter are also known as stony corals in as much as the living tissue thinly covers a skeleton composed of calcium carbonate. A coral "head" is formed of many individual polyps, each polyp only a few millimeters in diameter. The colony of polyps function essentially as a single organism by sharing nutrients via a well developed gastrovascular network, and the polyps are clones, each having the same genetic structure. Each polyp generation grows on the skeletal remains of previous generations, forming a structure that has a shape characteristic of the species, but subject to environmental influences.\n\nAlthough sea anemones can catch fish and other prey items and corals can catch plankton, they obtain much of their nutrient requirement from symbiotic unicellular dinoflagellates (type of algae) called zooxanthellae. Consequently, they are dependent upon growing in sunlight and for that reason usually found not far beneath the surface, although in clear waters corals can grow at depths of 60 m (200 ft). Other corals, notably the cold-water genus Lophelia, do not have associated algae, and can live in much deeper water, with recent finds as deep as 3000 m. Corals breed by spawning, with many corals of the same species in a region releasing gametes simultaneously over a period of one to several nights around a full moon.\n\nCorals are major contributors to the physical structure of coral reefs that develop only in tropical and subtropical waters. Some corals exist in cold waters, such as off the coast of Norway (north to at least 69° 14.24' N) and the Darwin Mounds off western Scotland. The most extensive development of extant coral reef is the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Indonesia is home to 581 of the world's 793 known coral reef-building coral species.\n\n\n\nHydra is a genus of simple, fresh-water animals possessing radial symmetry. Hydras are predatory animals belonging to the phylum Cnidaria and the class Hydrozoa.\n\nHydras are low power microscopical life forms and are often studied by biologists due to their regenerative powers. They can be found in most un-polluted freshwater ponds, lakes and streams in the temperate and tropical regions by gently sweeping a collecting net through weedy areas.
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Photosynthesis is an important biochemical process in which plants, algae, and some bacteria convert the energy of sunlight to chemical energy. The chemical energy is used to drive synthetic reactions such as the formaton of sugars or the fixation of nitrogen into amino acids, the building blocks for protein synthesis. Ultimately, nearly all living things depend on energy produced from photosynthesis for their nourishment, making it vital to life on Earth. It is also responsible for producing the oxygen that makes up a large portion of the Earth's atmosphere. Organisms that produce energy through photosynthesis are called photoautotrophs. Plants are the most visible representatives of photoautotrophs, but it should be emphasized that bacteria and algae also contribute to the conversion of free energy into usable energy.