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| Description: Detritivores face three main problems related to feeding: the search, the handling, and the quality of the food they consume. Individual organisms, be they a snail, mite, or fungus, first need to find a potential food item. Once found, that item needs to be captured, consumed, and digested. Upon digestion, the quality of the food impacts an organism's need to continue foraging, or to allocate time and energy for a different activity. For detritivores, body size influences both the microhabitat in which they are able to live as well as a species' ability to find and handle food. Across species, detritivore body sizes range from less than one micrometer for some bacteria to over two meters for some giant earthworms. Because of the importance size plays in influencing the feeding ecology of these species, terrestrial detritivores are often classified by their size, and not solely their taxonomic affiliation.
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