Question

Which of the following is nature's cleaner?
a. Consumers
b. Producers
c. Decomposers and scavengers
d. Symbionts

Answer 1

Hint: In the ecosystem, there is a food chain that consists of various types of organisms such as producers, primary and secondary consumers, and the apex predators, etc. Where energy is always obtained from sunlight and produces food by producers and this energy transfers from one level of organisms to another level and again back to the ecosystem.

Complete answer:
> Earth consists of various types of living organisms, such as plants and animals, where every day so many organisms die, but those dead organisms are not piling up, instead, they are decaying and decomposing and all the important nutrients reach back to the earth.

> From the above-given options, producers the organisms that produce food without depending on others, and they don’t play any role as a cleanser on the earth.
Another option is consumers, where these organisms depend food on other organisms, but most of these organisms do not feed on dead and decayed organic matter, so this is also the wrong answer.

> Symbionts are the organisms which have some relationship with each other, with or without mutual benefits, and they do not play any role as natural cleansers so it is a wrong answer

> Decomposers and scavengers, where both organisms have the same function, but with little difference.

> Decomposers are the heterotrophic organism and depend on other organic matter for food and energy, so many microorganisms act as decomposers, but unlike microorganisms, there are some other groups of organisms where they breakdown and carry out decomposition for their energy and subsequently for their growth and development.

> Fungi are the organisms which are act as decomposers, where unicellular organisms decay in small areas, but fungi by using the hyphae, they penetrate on the large surface area of dead and decaying organisms and decompose the organic matter by the enzymes they release, and later they absorb the nutrients.

> Scavengers are the organisms that consume dead organisms, generally, they can be called as carnivores feeding on carrion.
They play a very important role in the ecosystem by consuming the dead plants and animals, this scavengers complete the process that was left by the composers.
Some are obligate scavengers, such as beetles, blow flies and fly larvae where they mainly obtain food from dead organisms.
But some scavengers obtain food by other methods, if that won’t happen they act as scavengers.
Both decomposers and Scavengers play very important role as natural cleansers in this

Hence, the correct answer is option (C).

Note: There are another type of organisms such as Detritivore, where they also acts as composers, but the major difference is that Decomposers directly absorb the nutrients from the organic matter externally, while this detritivore cannot obtain externally, instead they ingest and then obtain, example for detritivore is earthworm.