Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An organism that is dependent on complex organic substances for nutrition because it cannot synthesize its own food.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun ecology An
organism whichrequires anexternal supply ofenergy in the form offood as it cannotsynthesize its own.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an organism that depends on complex organic substances for nutrition
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word heterotroph.
Examples
-
A heterotroph is an organism that feeds off of another, or its byproducts (so both herbivores and carnivores), as opposed to an autotroph which produces its own energy from the environment (photosynthesis for example).
Archive 2008-05-01 Bettina Tizzy 2008
-
A heterotroph is an organism that feeds off of another, or its byproducts (so both herbivores and carnivores), as opposed to an autotroph which produces its own energy from the environment (photosynthesis for example).
Madcow Cosmos' "Heterotroph" at the Garden Bettina Tizzy 2008
-
HANPP is definitely useful as a measure of the physical size of the economy relative to the containing ecosystem: It demonstrates how much of the trophic energy that would be available for wild-living animals and other heterotroph organisms in the absence of human activities is still in place.
Global human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) 2008
-
The first organism would have therefore been a heterotroph deriving energy from this existing pool of nutrients.
Luskin vs. Science (and Scientific American) - The Panda's Thumb 2006
-
Of course, from a certain point of view, no heterotroph is capable of feeding “itself”, it needs to find food out there to eat.
-
When the “heterotroph barrier” was finally crossed in the late Precambrian, herbivorous and carnivorous protists arose almost simultaneously, for no major biological differences separate the two groups.
-
As a myco-heterotroph, M. odorata obtains carbon resources from associated mycorrhizal fungi and has a highly reduced vegetative morphology consisting of an underground root mass that produces one to many diminutive reproductive stems (3. 5-6 cm in height).
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories 2009
-
Do you know a lot about how to identify if an animal is an "autotroph" or an "heterotroph"?
-
Ptolemy’s epicycles, the alphabet soup of subatomic particles prior to Gell-Mann’s work, Planck’s work on quantum mechanics, Fraunhofer’s work on stellar spectra, and the heterotroph hypothesis just to name a few.
Intelligent Design and String Theory - The Panda's Thumb 2006
-
Besides, we’re animals, so we have to make an effort to, pardon the expression, think like an autotroph instead of a heterotroph.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.