saprophytic's Usage Examples:

Notwithstanding the absence of chlorophyll, and the consequent parasitic or saprophytic habit, Bacteriaceae agree in so many morphological features with Cyanophyceae that the affinity can hardly be doubted.

The Perisporiaceae are saprophytic forms, the two chief genera being Aspergillus and Penicillium.

This is an extraordinarily large and varied group of forms which mostly live parasitically or saprophytically on vegetable tissue, but a few are parasitic on insect-larvae.

Usually it grows exposed to the light and contains chlorophyll, but subterranean saprophytic prothalli also occur in the Lycopodiaceae and Ophioglossaceae (fig.

The Ophioglossaceae are homosporous, and the prothalli, which are known in species of all three genera, are subterranean and saprophytic (fig.

Nearly all bacteria, owing to the absence of chlorophyll, are saprophytic or parasitic forms.

) germinate and develop a loose mycelium on living leaves, but only enter and destroy the tissues after the leaf has fallen; in some cases, however, these saprophytic epiphytes can do harm by intercepting light and air from the leaf (Fumago, 'c.

They are found living saprophytically (in part parasitically) underground in forests.

Nutrition is of course holozoic or saprophytic in the colourless forms, holophytic in the coloured; but these divergent methods are exhibited by different species of the same genus, or even by individuals of one and the same species under different conditions.

Koch in 1876 published his observations on Davaine's bacilli, placed beyond doubt their causal relation to splenic fever, discovered the spores and the saprophytic phase in the life-history of the organism, and cleared up important points in the whole question (figs.

865), the agents of the transformation of cellulose into peaty substances are saprophytic fungi and bacterial ferments.

Such a source is commonly met with among the Fungi, the insectivorous plants, and such of the higher plants as have a saprophytic habit.

Synonyms:

herbivorous,

Antonyms:

omnivorous, carnivorous, insectivorous,