{"id":811962,"date":"2026-07-19T10:35:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T10:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/811962\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T10:35:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T10:35:22","slug":"science-word-of-the-day-autotroph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/811962\/","title":{"rendered":"Science word of the day: Autotroph"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"elk-3e4db1b2-816e-11f1-ac6d-b9e8375b4381\">Science word of the day: Autotroph<\/p>\n<p>Pronunciation: AW&#8217;-tuh-trohf<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-seasonal\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-3e4db1b2-816e-11f1-ac6d-b9e8375b4381-2\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"kiosq-b\">What it means: Autotrophs are organisms that can feed themselves with inorganic substances such as light (for plants) or methane (certain microbes). Autotrophs were the first single-celled life-forms to colonize the planet, thriving on chemicals bubbling up from the subsurface at deep-sea vents or figuring out how to harness the sun for energy. Heterotrophs (like you, me and all fungi), arrived on the scene later to feast on these DIY-ers.<\/p>\n<p aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"kiosq-b\">How to use it in a sentence: Stromatolites, microbial mats built by cyanobacteria, are autotrophs that thrived in ancient shallow seas.<\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-3e4db374-816e-11f1-b776-8bf7a4b48160\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"kiosq-b\">Can you crack our science word of the day puzzle, <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/chain-science-word-of-the-day-puzzle\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/chain-science-word-of-the-day-puzzle\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/chain-science-word-of-the-day-puzzle\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chain Word<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>            You may like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Science word of the day: Autotroph Pronunciation: AW&#8217;-tuh-trohf What it means: Autotrophs are organisms that can feed themselves&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-811962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}