Paramecium are

The correct option is holozoic.

Let's understand the nutrition in Paramecium step-by-step:
1. Definition of Holozoic Nutrition: Holozoic nutrition is a method of heterotrophic nutrition that involves the ingestion of liquid or solid organic material, followed by its digestion, absorption, and assimilation inside the body. This is typical of free-living animals like amoeba, paramecium, and humans.
2. How Paramecium Feeds: Paramecium is a unicellular organism that feeds on microscopic organisms like bacteria, algae, and yeast. It uses its hair-like projections called cilia to sweep food particles along with water into its oral groove (cell mouth).
3. Digestion Process: Once inside, the food is enclosed in a food vacuole where digestive enzymes break down the complex food into simpler nutrients. The digested food is then absorbed into the cytoplasm, and the undigested waste is expelled through an anal pore.
4. Comparing Other Modes:
- Holophytic: This refers to autotrophic nutrition (making own food by photosynthesis, like plants). Paramecium lacks chlorophyll and cannot perform photosynthesis.
- Parasitic: This involves living in or on another host organism and deriving nutrients at the host's expense. Free-living Paramecium is not a parasite.
- Saprobiotic (Saprotrophic): This involves absorbing nutrients from dead and decaying organic matter externally. Paramecium ingests its food whole rather than absorbing decayed fluids directly.

Thus, because Paramecium ingests organic food particles and digests them internally, it exhibits holozoic nutrition.