Food Chain Definition Ecology

Every level in a food chain is known as a trophic level.

Food chain definition ecology. The food chain is a series of living beings that depend on each other as a source of food. There are no decomposers in a food chain. A food chain is basically made up of pro­ducers and consumers.

A food chain in a grassland ecosystem may consist of grasses and other plants, grasshoppers, frogs, snakes and hawks (figure 8.3). A food chain also shows how the organisms are related with each other by the food they eat. Supplement the directional flow of materials and energy from one organism to another is graphically represented by arrows.

Trophic cascade, an ecological phenomenon triggered by the addition or removal of top predators and involving reciprocal changes in the relative populations of predator and prey through a food chain. One animal may be part of several different food chains. The food chain starts with the producer or plants that convert solar energy into the usable form of energy (food) by the process of photosynthesis which is then eaten by consumers.

So, interconnected food chains in an ecosystem make a food web. A food chain shows how energy is transferred from one living organism to another via food. The concept of a food web is credited to charles elton, who introduced it in his 1927 book, animal ecology.

The food chain describes who eats whom in the wild. The consumers include all the other types of organisms in the ecosystem like herbivores, carnivores etc. Plant are producers (they make/produce food for other organisms).

Organisms in an ecosystem affect each other’s population. It shows the flow of energy and materials from one organism to the next, beginning with a producer. A food web can be described as a who eats whom diagram that shows the complex feeding relationships in an ecosystem.