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rabbit manure; how good is it
Steve Turner wrote in message . ..
Archimedes Plutonium wrote: I am trying to nail-down the inverse or reverse relationship. As to why plants need animals to reform nitrogen. Plants lack the biochemical pathways for large scale protein degradation. That is the specialty of saprophytes (e.g. fungi and bacteria). Legumes are able to convert atmospheric nitrogen to usable form by virtue of rhizobia bacteria in root nodules (it is the bacteria which do the conversion). Plants can also use inorganic (mineral) nitrate as a source of nitrogen. Higher animals are a relatively minor source of nitrogen. True enough. There are some plants that eat meat (like Venus Flytrap) but they are generally located in nitrogen depleted areas. There is an important symbiosis between plants and animals, in that plants use carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, and animals do the opposite. Um, not quite. Plants respire just fine. It's just that they make their own oxygen so that they can use respiration in an oxygen atmosphere to reduce the sugars they've made to use energy. Photosynthesis is the storage of energy. Respiration is the use or release of that energy. Animals do the latter. Plants do both. Some symbiosis not because of the nitrogen or carbon cycles but for breeding purposes. Some higher plants have learned to use animals to pollinate them and spread their seeds. Wind pollination is inefficient and random. Animal pollination is efficient relative to wind pollination. Animals carrying seeds away from the mother plant helps spread them in different directions instead of just downwind. In return, animals get valuable nutrition. Most lower plants don't take advantage of this situation as they developed before animals were important to the ecosystem. In conclusion, the hypothesis that the nitrogen cycle must include a direct animal to plant transfer does not seem to have any proof and the symbiosis exists for other reasons, in indirect transfer (animal to ground to plant) and in other cycles. Todd O. |
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