When you have an empty bottle, do you recycle it so the plastic or glass can be used again? Nature has its own recycling system: a group of organisms called decomposers.
Decomposers
feed on dead things: dead plant materials such as leaf litter and wood, animal carcasses, and feces. They perform a valuable service as Earth’s cleanup crew. Without
decomposers
, dead leaves, dead insects, and dead animals would pile up everywhere. Imagine what the world would look like!
More importantly,
decomposers
make vital nutrients available to an ecosystem’s primary producers—usually plants and algae.
Decomposers
break apart complex organic materials into more elementary substances: water and carbon dioxide, plus simple compounds containing nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium. All of these components are substances that plants need to grow.
Some
decomposers
are specialized and break down only a certain kind of dead
organism
. Others are generalists that feed on lots of different materials. Thanks to
decomposers
,
nutrients
get added back to the soil or water, so the
producers
can use them to grow and reproduce.
Most
decomposers
are microscopic
organisms
, including protozoa and bacteria. Other
decomposers
are big enough to see without a microscope. They include fungi along with invertebrate
organisms
sometimes called detritivores, which include earthworms, termites, and millipedes.
Fungi
are important
decomposers
, especially in forests. Some kinds of
fungi
, such as mushrooms, look like plants. But
fungi
do not contain chlorophyll, the pigment that green plants use to make their own food with the energy of sunlight. Instead,
fungi
get all their
nutrients
from dead materials that they break down with special enzymes.
The next time you see a forest floor carpeted with dead leaves or a dead bird lying under a bush, take a moment to appreciate
decomposers
for the way they keep
nutrients
flowing through an
ecosystem
.
