Ecological Importance
Anaerobic respiration plays a major role in the global nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon cycles through the reduction of the oxyanions of nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon to more-reduced compounds. Dissimilatory denitrification is the main route by which biologically fixed nitrogen is returned to the atmosphere as molecular nitrogen gas. Hydrogen sulfide, a product of sulfate respiration, is a potent neurotoxin and responsible for the characteristic 'rotten egg' smell of brackish swamps. Along with volcanic hydrogen sulfide, biogenic sulfide has the capacity to precipitiate heavy metal ions from solution, leading to the deposition of sulfidic metal ores.
Read more about this topic: Anaerobic Respiration
Famous quotes containing the words ecological and/or importance:
“The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the, if you will, ecological chain of breathing, growing, and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.”
—Midge Decter (b. 1927)
“For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)