Q.What are chemoheterotrophs?

[!TLDR]

The question asks what chemoheterotrophs are. …

Chemoheterotrophs are one of the four nutritional groups of bacteria, defined by using chemical reactions (rather than light) as their energy source and using ready-made organic compounds (rather than carbon dioxide) as their carbon source. In practice, this means chemoheterotrophic bacteria depend on organic material that has already been produced by other living things, breaking it down both to obtain energy and to obtain the carbon-containing building blocks they need to grow. This is the largest and most familiar nutritional group of bacteria: it includes most decomposer bacteria, which break down dead organic matter, and most disease-causing (pathogenic) bacteria …

• Confusing chemoheterotrophs with chemoautotrophs, which get energy from chemical reactions but their carbon from CO2, not from organic compounds. …