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Concept
Oligotroph
Summary
An oligotroph is an organism that can live in an environment that offers very low levels of nutrients. They may be contrasted with copiotrophs, which prefer nutritionally rich environments. Oligotrophs are characterized by slow growth, low rates of metabolism, and generally low population density. Oligotrophic environments are those that offer little to sustain life. These environments include deep oceanic sediments, caves, glacial and polar ice, deep subsurface soil, aquifers, ocean waters, and leached soils.
Examples of oligotrophic organisms are the cave-dwelling olm; the bacterium "Candidatus Pelagibacter communis", which is the most abundant organism in the ocean (with an estimated 2 × 1028 individuals in total); and lichens, with their extremely low metabolic rate.
Etymologically, the word "oligotroph" is a combination of the Greek adjective oligos (ὀλίγος) meaning "few" and the adjective trophikos (τροφικός)) meaning "feeding".
Plant adaptations to oligotrophic soils provide for greater and more efficient nutrient uptake, reduced nutrient consumption, and efficient nutrient storage. Improvements in nutrient uptake are facilitated by root adaptations such as nitrogen-fixing root nodules, mycorrhizae and cluster roots. Consumption is reduced by very slow growth rates, and by efficient use of low-availability nutrients; for example, the use of highly available ions to maintain turgor pressure, with low-availability nutrients reserved for the building of tissues. Despite these adaptations, nutrient requirement typically exceed uptake during the growing season, so many oligotrophic plants have the ability to store nutrients, for example, in trunk tissues, when demand is low, and remobilise them when demand increases.
Oligotrophs occupy environments where the available nutrients offer little to sustain life. The term “oligotrophic” is commonly used to describe terrestrial and aquatic environments with very low concentrations of nitrates, iron, phosphates, and carbon sources.
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