A food chain shows a sequence of living beings in which an organism eats the one underneath. Most animals eat more than one thing, so to show ALL the feeding relationships, we use food networks that are made up of many intersecting food chains. The term food chain describes the order in which organisms, or living beings, depend on each other for food. Every ecosystem or community of living beings has one or more food chains.
In a food chain, there is a unique path for energy flow and in a food network, there are different paths for energy flow. The flow of nutrients and energy from one organism to another at different trophic levels forms a food chain. The food chain is a linear sequence of organisms in which nutrients and energy are transferred from one organism to another. However, the food web is able to show the appropriate representation of energy flow, since it shows interactions between different organisms.
A food chain refers to the order of events in an ecosystem, where a living organism eats another organism and then that organism is consumed by another larger organism. In a food chain, an organism eats a single item, while in a food web, an organism consumes several items. The trophic level refers to the sequential stages of a food chain, starting with producers at the bottom, followed by primary, secondary and tertiary consumers. Since autotrophs are the basis of all Earth's ecosystems, most environmental ecosystems follow this type of food chain.
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