Question

Mixotrophic nutrition is exhibited by which of the following kingdoms?
a. Monera
b. Protista
c. Animalia
d. None of the above

Answer 1

Hint: Organisms of this kingdom can be plant-like, fungi-like, or like an animal. This means that certain species can acquire food such as plants, fungi, or animals. Some of them decompose dead and decaying material.

Complete answer:
> Option A is incorrect. Monera is single-celled organisms and has no specific nutritional mode. The predominant nutritional mode is absorbent but some groups are both photosynthetic (halophytic) and chemosynthetic.

> Option B is correct. Mixotrophic nutrition refers to both autotrophic, and heterotrophic organisms. A mixotrophic organism that can use a mixture of different sources of energy and carbon, rather than having a single trophic mode on the continuum from full autotrophy at one end to heterotrophy at the other.

> Option C is incorrect. The organisms of the animal kingdom are multicellular, eukaryotic, heterotrophic, meaning they get nutrition from organic sources. Most animals get nutrition by ingestion of other organisms or decomposition of organic matter.

> Option D is incorrect. Each kingdom organism exhibits a different mode of nutrition to survive in the environment, such as holophytic, holozoic, saprotrophic, mixotrophic, parasitic, and symbiotic.

So, the correct answer is Option B.

Additional information:
Food mechanisms and their use amongst protists are diverse. These include capturing living prey by encircling pseudopodial extensions (in certain amoeboids), trapping food particles in water currents by philtres made up of specialized buccal compounds (in ciliates), and simply spreading dissolved organic material through the cell membrane, such as sucking certain host cells out of the cytoplasm (as in many parasitic protists). In the case of many symbiotic protists, survival methods such as an invasion of the host and transfer to fresh hosts have developed through long associations and often both partners coevolution.

Note: Autotrophy (involving plastids, photosynthesis, and the production of the organism's nutrients from the environment) and heterotrophy (the intake of nutrients) are the major nutritional modes between protists.