Talk:Phototroph

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Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit · history · refresh · how to use this template) Rated "top" as high school/SAT biology content and general concept of metabolism. - tameeria 05:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Fungi are unlikely to be phototrophs. All of the types I can think of obtain their energy by breaking down other organic material. That would make them chemoorganoheterotrophs.

fungi are heterotrophs that feed by absorption

(campbell & reece, 2005) Kelkhara 17:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Besides that, higher plants are not mentioned at all in the first sentence. With "fungi" the author probably refers to lichens (mentioned later in the paragraph). But the phototrophic components of lichens are not always cyanobacteria, but (most often) algae. Anyway the fungal component is not phototrophic on its own. Lichens are photobionts through the symbiont algae or cyanobacteria (though the cyanobacteria can be endosymbionts). I suggest some rewriting here.

And by the way, the first sentence, with all its errors, is exactly the same as the definition in http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/p/p0268800.html, so it looks like the first and last part of the paragraph have different authors. Is copy and paste work?

(any modern schoolbook on botany has it right) [] 13 November 2006

[edit] Merge

Currently this article deals with photosynthetic organisms but there's already one dedicated to photosynthesis. This article should be merged with photoheterotroph for a better treatment of the different biological methods of harvesting solar energy, i.e. photosynthesis and bacteriorhodopsins. Bendž|Ť 13:59, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

No, what this article needs is language that describes what's common between photoautotrophy and photoheterotrophy. Each of those deserves its own article, and phototrophy is not synonymous with either. The problem with this article now is that, yes, it replicates content in both auto ands hetero articles, without showing what's different and what's the same between those two. A merge is not the solution: the solution is to write a whole new phototrophy article that is actually about phototrophy in the aggregate. 76.200.150.238 18:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree - photoautotrophs come under the category of autotrophs, while photoheterotrophs are a type of heterotroph, 2 distinct things. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a links table on the right-hand side of the page which gives links to autotrophs, chemoautotrophs, heterotrophs, photoheterotrophs and chemoheterotrophs to make the relationship between these 6 pages clearer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.186.226.222 (talk) 02:39, 15 March 2008 (UTC)