Functions and Examples of Chemoautotroph – Imaluop

Hi, now we are going to discuss functions and examples of chemoautotroph, a group of organisms who can produce their own food by using different types of inorganic chemicals and they produce organic food. 

Basic Idea About Chemoautotroph: 

Some organisms do not have to depend upon other organisms for their food because they can produce their food on their own and they are known as autotrophs, the trops means food and the word auto refers to the fact that they can produce their own food.

But autotrophs can produce their own food in different ways and for this use some raw material from which they can produce their food and it can be done in two ways, as seen in photoautotroph where the organism use light energy to produce their food and another one method is chemoautotroph where the organism produce food using inorganic chemicals.

Now we will not focus on photoautotroph because we already discussed about photoautotrophic nutrition, now we will only focus on the chemoautotroph. 

Chemoautotroph depends on different types of chemical like iron, sulphur for electrons because those chemicals act as electron donor and electron is their source of energy for production of organic nutrients.  

In chemoautotroph the organic nutrients like sugar, lipid and protein is produced and the source of carbon for this process comes from the carbon of different inorganic chemicals they use as raw materials. 

Autotrophs are main source of energy in food chain and in all ecosystem they are very important but in some ecosystem plant can not live become of extreme conditions like in deep sea but there chemoautotroph start the food chain because chemoautotroph easily survive in those extreme conditions. 

Examples of Chemoautotroph: 

Nitrogen Fixing Soil Bacteria: 

Different types of nitrogen fixing bacteria present in soil like Nitrosomonas are responsible for converting different types of inorganic nitrogen compounds into organic nitrogen compounds and it helps other plants grow in soil to obtain sufficient amounts of nitrogen in absorbable form.

So here we can see that the chemoautotroph bacteria also help the plant who are self autotrophs but yet dependant on other chemoautotrophs for their nutrients. 

Iron Bacteria: 

Iron bacteria are examples of chemoautotroph where the iron rich environment is used as their energy source and they live in oxidising ferrous oxides and produce their own food but sometimes it harms our daily life because they produce iron strain in different household items. 

Methanogens: 

They are chemoautotrophic bacteria that live in the deep ocean, in the stomach of ruminants, in swamps and muddy water bodies where they use electrons from hydrogen gas and produce large amounts of methane gas which can be used as biogas to meet our daily household power requirements. 

Functions of Chemoautotroph: 

Nitrogen Fixation: 

Different nitrogen fixing bacteria present in soil, like Nitrosomonas is an example of chemoautotrophic bacteria and they use the nitrogen content present in inorganic chemicals like ammonia and use the nitrogen to produce different types of organic nitrogen compounds like amino acids, protein and this is very important nutrients for other organisms present in soil and they help to obtain the nitrogen to the plant. 

Alternative of Photosynthesis: 

In most of the ecosystem energy flow starts from different photoautotrophic organisms like plants who can utilise the sunlight and use different inorganic raw material to produce organic food but think about the environment where sunlight does not reach.

Some regions like deep sea where sunlight do not reach and no photosynthesis occurs, then how the ecosystem in those regions get nutrients, it is possible due to the presence of different types of chemoautotroph who do not need sunlight for food production they can produce organic nutrients by the chemical energy from different inorganic chemicals and supply the energy and nutrients to the food chain and help to sustain life in those extreme conditions.