Food Chains
Provided:
Every organism needs to obtain energy in order to live. For example, plants get energy from the sun, some animals eat plants, and some animals eat other animals.
Subject:
A Food chain is the sequence of who eats whom in a biological community (an ecosystem) to obtain nutrition. A Food chain starts with the primary energy source, usually the sun or boiling-hot deep sea vents. The next link in the chain is an organism that make its own Foodfrom the primary energy source — an example is photosynthetic plants that make their ownFood from sunlight (using a process called photosynthesis) and chemosynthetic bacteria that make their Food energy from chemicals in hydrothermal vents. These are called autotrophs or primary producers.
Next come organisms that eat the autotrophs; these organisms are called herbivores or primary consumers — an example is a rabbit that eats grass.
The next link in the chain is animals that eat herbivores – these are called secondary consumers — an example is a snake that eat rabbits.
In turn, these animals are eaten by larger predators — an example is an owl that eats snakes.
The tertiary consumers are are eaten by quaternary consumers — an example is a hawk that eats owls. Each Food chain end with a top predator, and animal with no natural enemies (like an alligator, hawk, or polar bear).
The arrows in a Food chain show the flow of energy, from the sun or hydrothermal vent to a top predator. As the energy flows from organism to organism, energy is lost at each step. A network of many Food Chains is called a Food web.
Trophic Levels:
The trophic level of an organism is the position it holds in a Food chain.
1. Primary producers (organisms that make their own Food from sunlight and/or chemical energy from deep sea vents) are the base of every Food chain – these organisms are called autotrophs.
2. Primary consumers are animals that eat primary producers; they are also called herbivores (plant-eaters).
3. Secondary consumers eat primary consumers. They are carnivores (meat-eaters) and omnivores (animals that eat XXXX animals and plants).
4. Tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers.
5. Quaternary consumers eat tertiary consumers.
6. Food Chains "end" with top predators, animals that have little or no natural enemies.
When any organism dies, it is eventually eaten by detrivores (like vultures, wormsand crabs) and broken down by decomposers (mostly bacteria and fungi), and the exchange of energy continues.
Some organisms’ position in the Food chain can vary as their diet differs. For example, when a bear eats berries, the bear is functioning as a primary consumer. When a bear eats a plant-eating rodent, the bear is functioning as a secondary consumer. When the bear eats salmon, the bear is functioning as a tertiary consumer (this is because salmon is a secondary consumer, since salmon eat herring that eat zooplankton that eat phytoplankton, that make their own energy from sunlight). Think about how people’s place in the Food chain varies – often within a single meal.
Numbers of Organisms:
In any Food web, energy is lost each time one organism eats another. Because of this, there have to be many more plants than there are plant-eaters. There are more autotrophs than heterotrophs, and more plant-eaters than meat-eaters. Although there is intense competition between animals, there is also an interdependence. When one species goes extinct, it can affect an entire chain of other species and have unpredictable consequences.
Equilibrium
Conclusion
As the number of carnivores in a community increases, they eat more and more of the herbivores, decreasing the herbivore population. It then becomes harder and harder for the carnivores to find herbivores to eat, and the population of carnivores decreases. In this way, the carnivores and herbivores stay in a relatively stable equilibrium, each limiting the other’s population. A similar equilibrium exists between plants and plant-eaters.
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Every living thing needs energy in order to live. Everytime animals do something (run, jump) They use energy to do that. Animals get energy from the Food They Eat, and all living things get energy from food. Plants use sunlight, water and nutrients to get energy (in a process called photosynthesis ). Energy Is Necessary for living beings to grow.
A food chain shows how each living thing gets food, and how nutrients and energy are passed from creature to creature. Food chains begin with plant-life, and end with animal-life.Some animals eat plants, some animals eat other animals.
A simple food chain could Start with grass, Which is eaten by rabbits. Then the rabbits are eaten by foxes.
No ecosystem is simple enough to be k of food chain repres
The feeding relationship among organisms at different tropic level form a chain, the food chain.A food chain may be defined as a series o organisms that transfers food between the tropic level of an ecosystem.All food chain begin with producers which are usually plants in an ecosystem.The food chain continues to herbivorse at the next tropic level,followed by one or more level of carnivorse ,the carnivorse are consumed by decomposers .And example of food chain is shown below.
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Ecosystems have an hierarchy of feeding relationships (trophic levels) that determine the pathway of energy flow in the ecosystem. The energy flow in the ecosystem can be illustrated as a Food chain.
It is possible to construct food chains for an entire ecosystem, but this starts to create a problem.
The food chains below are form a European Oak Woodland. In fact they are based on real food chains at Wytham Wood in Oxford
In the four different food chains only ten species are listed and some of them are in more than one food chain. If we continued to list all the species in the wood and their interactions in every food chain the list would run for many pages.
Food chains only illustrate a direct feeding relationship between one organism and another in a single hierarchy. The reality though is very different. The diet of almost all consumers is not limited to a single food species. So a single species can appear in more than one food chain.
