Hello Friends

I'm sure this will be a simple question for many of you, but I Googled and couldn't get anything.

Can Nitrogen fixing organisms, such as Cyanobacteria, ignore sun light and get all their energy from Nitrogen ?

I originally thought Nitrogen Fixation, was just a handy process that would give the organism an extra bit of Nitrogen when needed. But today a friend of mine said, "No they can also live totally of the Nitrogen" !!

I thought I'd check here, since I know there are some experts here.

Would greatly appreciate some help.

Thank You.

He must have confused something, or used a misunderstandable formulation, or whatever. See here.

Cool, so it is like I thought originally.

Thank You Berthold.

Yeah, that is odd. Fixation REQUIRES energy. N-fixation is becoming an increasingly important topic because of the issue of eutrophication due to excessive fertilizer use. It is giving non-fixing organisms a leg-up in area where N is usually limiting and we are seeing a decrease in the biodiversity of organisms like mycorrhizal fungi due to decreased association.