Lithotrophs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Organisms that obtain energy by oxidizing inorganic compounds; microorganisms that derive electrons from minerals; life forms that metabolize non-organic substances for growth
2. Microbes that use inorganic substances such as minerals as an energy source; living entities that gain electrons from rock-based or mineral sources; biological beings that oxidize inorganic chemical compounds for sustenance
3. Small life forms capable of extracting energy from inorganic molecules; bacteria or archaea that metabolize minerals for energy; organisms that utilize non-organic electron donors to fuel their cellular processes

Etymology: "Lithotrophs" is the plural of "lithotroph," a term built from two Greek elements. The first, "litho-," comes from Greek "lithos," meaning stone, and the second, "-troph," comes from "trophos," meaning feeder or nourisher, from the verb "trephein," to nourish. Put together, the word literally means something like "stone-feeder," a name that describes organisms that draw their energy from inorganic mineral sources rather than from sunlight or from other living things. The formation follows a familiar pattern in scientific vocabulary, where Greek roots are combined to name a newly identified way of life. Other words in the same family include "autotroph," meaning self-feeder, and "heterotroph," meaning other-feeder, so a lithotroph sits alongside these as one more way of describing how an organism gets its food. The suffix "-troph" appears throughout biology in exactly this sense, giving the whole group a shared, transparent vocabulary.

Synonyms: rock eaters, inorganic feeders