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Old 26-04-2003, 01:30 PM
Beverly Erlebacher
 
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Default reverse (inverse) relationship of plant to animal rabbit manure

In article ,
Archimedes Plutonium NOdtgEMAIL wrote:

Perhaps all plant fertilizer has to be processed by bacteria and microorganisms.
But what I am really trying to peer into is something on the lines of the
mechanisms of photosynthesis. There are probably only a few scientists on
Earth who are experts in photosynthesis. Experts who know the molecule by
molecule details of the process.


On the contrary, most people who can read a college-level plant physiology
textbook can learn the molecule by molecule details of the process. Try
it some time.

In the same vain, I am trying to peer into a relationship of animals to plants with
regard to nitrogen. An inverse or reverse Commensalism relationship that is as
abstract and profound as the process of Photosynthesis.


People keep telling you that plants and microbes do a fine job of producing
CO2 without the help of animals, but you keep ignoring it.

If humans never existed on Earth, the forests and grasses and all plants would
be fertilized by animals and microorganisms. I contend that this plant would
become barren of life if not for animals and microorganisms. That the plant
kingdom cannot transform and transport nitrogen and other fertilizers without
animals.


The animals aren't necessary. The microbes are.

So, the question I really have is what does the animal body do to nitrogen that
plant bodies find it impossible or extremely difficult to do to nitrogen? Do animals
transform it from gaseous nitrogen to that of solid nitrogen or chemically bind the
nitrogen into solid form?


Nope, you've got it backwards (no surprise). Some plants provide specialized
environments inside their tissues for microorganisms that fix gaseous nitrogen
into nitrogenous compounds. There's also abiogenic nitrate produced by
lightning. Many plants would do just fine without the animal kingdom at all.
Minerals are released from soil particles and made available to plants by
chemical weathering and the actions of microbes which break down organic
matter, e.g. producing humic acid which can solubilize some minerals.

Animals can only use nitrogen acquired as complex molecules in food. Nitrates
are toxic, and ammonia is a waste product of catabolism.

Plants can only take up nitrogen in a few forms, e.g. nitrates and ammonium.
Manure and carrion has to rot down to this level (mineralization) before
plants can benefit from the nitrogen in them.

You can get all this from an introductory biology text, or even a good book
about gardening or agriculture.

I disagree. If plants could speak I bet they would say "please come here rabbit
and eat my shoots and please drop some pellets". I bet that fruit of most plants
is considered by plants as what exrement is considered by animals.


It would be a net loss for the plant, since the rabbit consumes the
carbohydrates the plant made by laborious photosynthesis, the proteins it
consumed more energy to generate, and the minerals it acquired, often at
the expense of energy (active transport), and returns only part of the
nitrogen and minerals, using the rest to hop around and build more rabbit(s).

The fruits of a plant are the 'purpose' of the whole game - reproduction.
Perhaps you can't distinguish between offspring and excrement, but most
people can.

If you read a few intro biology books, you'd make less of a fool of yourself
in these groups with your silly speculations. There are a lot of things in
biology that can be speculated about using our known but incomplete current
understanding, but your refusal to acknowledge that any knowledge already
exists will prevent you from learning enough to participate in such discussion.

It is obvious that Earth had natural fertilization long before any humans ever existed
and that the animals were this natural fertilization network. Your above
statements are lacking in commonsense in the commonsense that every animal
excrement and body when dead is a fertilizer for plants. Your above dismisses
that obvious reality.


Nope. The microbes that break down organic matter, mainly of plant origin,
are what makes nutrients available to plants in a natural ecosystem. Just
because manure is a fertilizer doesn't mean it's the only fertilizer, or
only source of plant nutrients. See the abiogenic nitrogen, above, and the
minerals released from soil particles, ditto.

Archimedes Plutonium,
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies


Just common sense, no doubt.