Question

2. Why are plants called autotrophs

Answer 1

An autotroph is an organism that can produce its own food using light, water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals. Because autotrophs produce their own food, they are sometimes called producers.

Plants are the most familiar type of autotroph, but there are many different kinds of autotrophic organisms. Algae, which live in water and whose larger forms are known as seaweed, is autotrophic. Phytoplankton, tiny organisms that live in the ocean, are autotrophs. Some types of bacteria are autotrophs. 

Most autotrophs use a process called photosynthesis to make their food. In photosynthesis, autotrophs use energy from the sun to convert water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air into a nutrient called glucose. Glucose is a type of sugar. The glucose gives plants energy. Plants also use glucose to make cellulose, a substance they use to grow and build cell walls.

All plants with green leaves, from the tiniest mosses to towering fir trees, synthesize, or create, their own food through photosynthesis. Algae, phytoplankton, and some bacteria also perform photosynthesis.

Some rare autotrophs produce food through a process called chemosynthesis, rather than through photosynthesis. Autotrophs that perform chemosynthesis do not use energy from the sun to produce food. Instead, they make food using energy from chemical reactions, often combining hydrogen sulfide or methane with oxygen. 

Organisms that use chemosynthesis live in extreme environments, where the toxic chemicals needed for oxidation are found. For example, bacteria living in active volcanoes oxidize sulfur to produce their own food. At Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, bacteria capable of chemosynthesis have been found in hot springs.

Bacteria that live in the deep ocean, near hydrothermal vents, also produce food through chemosynthesis. A hydrothermal vent is a narrow crack in the seafloor. Seawater seeps down through the crack into hot, partly melted rock below. The boiling-hot water then circulates back up into the ocean, loaded with minerals from the hot rock. These minerals include hydrogen sulfide, which the bacteria use in chemosynthesis. 

Autotrophic bacteria that produce food through chemosynthesis have also been found at places on the seafloor called cold seeps. At cold seeps, hydrogen sulfide and methane seep up from beneath the seafloor and mix with the ocean water and dissolved carbon dioxide. The autotrophic bacteria oxidize these chemicals to produce energy.

Answer 2

because plants can feed themselves unlike animals and other types of organism .......
However ,there are some plants that cannot feed themselves .An example the ,venus flytrap.........
............Therefore plants are called autotrophs...........