Asked in Conditions and Diseases
Conditions and Diseases
What is saphrophytes?
Answer

Wiki User
July 07, 2012 12:09PM
saprophyte /sap·ro·phyte/ (sap´ro-fīt) any organism living upon dead or decaying organic matter
Related Questions
Asked in Animal Life
What happens to a dead carcass?

well it depends really, if its in a regular climate ( sun, air,
water, not freezing or like a furnace) then it will be broken
down(decompose) into nutrients by saphrophytes( bacteria, funghi
and protista), that is if other animals haven't been scavenging off
it. However a carcass doesn't necessarily need to have organisms
feeding off it to break down, the chemicals in its own body will
often decompose the body on their own. Saying that, most of the
bacteria that eat you when you die come from your own digestive
tract as microbes in your body outnumber the human cells in your
body. If the carcass is buried almost immediately in an environment
that doesn't get disturbed much, then it will create a fossil as
mineral rich water permeates into the gap that the animal has made
in the ground (this is over thousands of years..) a body in an
anaerobic (no oxygen) environment will still decay as a lot of
organisms do not require oxygen to live. However put it in a vacuum
and you have no decomposition by organisms, however as mentioned
above, the carcass' own bodily fluids will decompose it to some
degree. If there is very little heat, the carcass will degrade very
slowly as particles don't move quickly in low temperatures. There
are food packets discarded by explorers in the Antarctic and Arctic
40 years ago that would still be safe to eat today. However heat
does definitely increase decomposition.