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ShareFood chains and food webs and/or food networks describe the feeding relationships between species in a biotic community.
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In other words, they show the transfer of material and energy from one species to another within an ecosystem. As usually put, an organism is connected to another organism for which it is a source of food energy and material by an arrow representing the direction of biomass transfer.
Organisms are grouped into trophic levels based on how many links they are removed from the primary producers.
Primary producers, or autotrophs, are species capable of producing complex organic substances (essentially "food") from an energy source and inorganic materials.
These organisms are typically photosynthetic plants, bacteria or algae, but in rare cases, like those organisms forming the base of deep-sea vent food webs, can be chemotrophic.
All organisms that eat the autotrophs are called heterotrophs.
They get their energy by eating the producers.
A food chain describes a single pathway that energy and nutrients may follow in an ecosystem.
There is one organism per trophic level, and trophic levels are therefore easily defined.
They usually start with a primary producer and end with a top predator.
Here is an example of a food chain: phytoplankton to copepod to fish to squid to seal to orca.
For more information about the topic Food chain, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Trophic level — In ecology, the trophic level is the position that an organism occupies in a food chain - what it eats, and what eats it. Wildlife biologists look at ... > read more
Biomass (ecology) — In ecology, biomass refers to the cumulation of living matter. That is, it is the total living biological material in a given area or of a biological ... > read more
Protozoa — Protozoa are single-celled eukaryotes (organisms whose cells have nuclei) that commonly show characteristics usually associated with animals, most ... > read more
Plankton — Plankton are drifting organisms that inhabit the water column of oceans, seas, and bodies of fresh water. Plankton abundance and distribution are ... > read more
Phytoplankton — Phytoplankton refers to the autotrophic component of the plankton that drifts in the water column. Most phytoplankton are too small to be ... > read more
Ecological niche — In ecology, a niche is a term describing the relational position of a species or population in an ecosystem. More formally, the niche includes how a ... > read more
Herbivore — A herbivore is often defined as any organism that eats only plants. By that definition, many fungi, some bacteria, many animals, about 1% of ... > read more
Fish farming — Fish farming is the principal form of aquaculture, while other methods may fall under mariculture. It involves raising fish commercially in tanks or ... > read more
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