AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -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.

Detailed explanation-2: -When plants and animals die, they become food for decomposers like bacteria, fungi and earthworms. Decomposers or saprotrophs recycle dead plants and animals into chemical nutrients like carbon and nitrogen that are released back into the soil, air and water.

Detailed explanation-3: -Decomposers are organisms that break down dead plants or animals into the substances that plants need for growth.

Detailed explanation-4: -In a food web nutrients are recycled in the end by decomposers. Animals like shrimp and crabs can break the materials down to detritus. Then bacteria reduce the detritus to nutrients. Decomposers work at every level, setting free nutrients that form an essential part of the total food web.

Detailed explanation-5: -Detritivores and decomposers make up the last part of food chains. Detritivores are organisms that eat nonliving plant and animal remains. For example, scavengers such as vultures eat dead animals. Dung beetles eat animal feces.