What is food chain and example?

A) The sequence of living organisms in a community in which one organism consumes another organism to transfer food energy is called the food chain. The food chain describes who eats whom in nature. All living things, from single-celled algae to giant blue whales, need food to survive. Each food chain is a possible route that energy and nutrients can follow through the ecosystem.

For example, grass produces its own food from sunlight. When the fox dies, bacteria break down its body and return it to the soil, where it provides nutrients to plants such as grass. Of course, many different animals eat grass, and rabbits can eat other plants besides grass. Foxes, in turn, can eat many types of animals and plants.

Each of these living beings can be part of multiple food chains. All the interconnected and overlapping food chains of an ecosystem form a food web. Trophic levels Organisms in food chains are grouped into categories called trophic levels. Broadly speaking, these levels are divided into producers (first trophic level), consumers (second, third and fourth trophic levels) and decomposers.

Producers, also known as autotrophs, make their own food. They constitute the first level of every food chain. Autotrophs are usually single-celled plants or organisms. Nearly all autotrophs use a process called photosynthesis to create “food” (a nutrient called glucose) from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water.

Plants are the most familiar type of autotroph, but there are many other types. Algae, whose larger forms are known as seaweed, are autotrophic. Phytoplankton, small organisms that live in the ocean, are also autotrophic. Some types of bacteria are autotrophic.

For example, bacteria that live in active volcanoes use sulfur compounds to produce their own food. This process is called chemosynthesis. The second trophic level is made up of organisms that feed on producers. These are called primary consumers or herbivores.

Deer, turtles, and many types of birds are herbivorous. Tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers. There may be more levels of consumers before a chain finally reaches its main predator. The main predators, also called supreme predators, feed on other consumers.

Consumers can be carnivores (animals that feed on other animals) or omnivores (animals that feed on both plants and animals). Omnivores, like people, consume many types of food. People eat plants, such as vegetables and fruits. We also eat animals and animal products, such as meat, milk and eggs.

We eat mushrooms, like mushrooms. We also eat seaweed in edible seaweed such as nori (used to wrap sushi rolls) and sea lettuce (used in salads). Detritivores and decomposers are the final part of food chains. Detritivores are organisms that feed on the remains of non-living plants and animals.

For example, scavengers, such as vultures, eat dead animals. Dung beetles eat animal feces, decomposers such as fungi and bacteria complete the food chain. They convert organic waste, such as decaying plants, into inorganic materials, such as nutrient-rich soils. Decomposers complete the life cycle and return nutrients to the soil or oceans for use by autotrophs.

This starts a whole new food chain. A food chain is a sequence of organisms through which nutrients and energy are transferred in the form of food from one organism to another. The food chain describes who eats whom to survive in an ecosystem. The food chain is also the route for energy transfer in an ecosystem.

Energy is produced by “producers” and transferred to “consumers” and then to “decomposers”. Each step or level of the food chain forms a trophic level. Autotrophs or producers are the first at the trophic level. From then on, primary consumers and secondary consumers continue.

The last trophic level is that of decomposers. These tropic levels help us understand the food chain and the transfer of energy at various trophic levels. Energy transfer occurs at all trophic levels. In a terrestrial ecosystem, green plants capture approximately 1% of the energy from sunlight that falls on their leaves and convert it into food energy.

Thereafter, energy is further transferred to each trophic level. However, at each trophic level, there is a loss of energy in the form of heat to the environment. The food chain is one of the most interesting topics in science and explains how all living beings are connected to each other in an ecosystem. It is usually introduced in Science class 3 and students can explore it in detail until class 9.

In addition to the school context, it is an intriguing concept in and of itself and is also presented in several competitive exams. This blog aims to give more details about what a food chain and a food network are together with their diagrams and examples. Now that you are familiar with what the food chain is at the trophic level, let's understand Food Web. The complex organization of organisms in the ecosystem results in interconnected food chains.

Whenever there are large chains interconnected, they form a food web. A food web always represents the flow of energy, as well as energy, consumed on a broader level by any organism in the ecosystem. Often, many predators eat a single organism, or several organisms are eaten by a single animal. In this situation, you are incompetent to show the exact energy flow, since there are several levels of energy that are interconnected.

In this case, a food network would be a better solution for interpreting energy flow. For example, a frog eats a fly and then eats it by a larger animal. The detritus food chain includes dead organic matter. It includes species of organisms and plants such as algae, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, mites, insects, worms, etc.

In this food chain, dead organic matter from plants and animals is degraded by decomposers and detritivores, which are then ingested by smaller organisms, such as carnivores. Examples of carnivores are worms, frogs, snakes and more, while detritivores are fungi, bacteria or protozoa that feed on detritus. For example, dead organic waste is consumed by microscopic organisms such as bacteria or fungi. It starts with autotrophs, which include green plants, goes through herbivores and then carnivores.

In this one, the energy of the lowest trophic level is acquired from photosynthesis. There are two types of grazing food chains. The first is a chain of predators in which one animal consumes another animal. The animal that is eaten is known as prey and the animal that eats is called a predator.

Second, it's the parasitic chain: plants and animals in a grazing food chain are infected by parasites. For example, zooplanktons eat phytoplankton, fish eat zooplankton, and small fish eat big fish. A consumer of a food chain is a living being that eats organisms from a different population. A consumer is also referred to as a heterotroph.

Consumers are usually predatory animals, such as carnivores, but also herbivorous consumers who eat plants. For example, both a tiger and a deer are consumers. Organisms that feed on producers are called primary consumers. There are many major consumers, and they are usually small in size.

The main consumers are herbivores or vegetarians. For example, rabbits, grasshoppers, giraffes, vegetarian humans, etc. Organisms that feed on primary consumers are called secondary consumers of energy and proteins. Secondary consumers can be both carnivores and omnivores.

They can range from small animals to large predators. Organisms that feed on primary and secondary consumers are called tertiary consumers of energy and proteins. For example, tigers, lions, humans, etc. We often find animals that consume dead and decaying matter; these chains that begin when the consumer eats dead organic matter are known as the detritus food chain (DFC).

To meet their energy requirements, decomposers, such as fungi and bacteria, feed on dead, inorganic matter. In a marine food chain, single-celled organisms called phytoplankton provide food for small shrimp called krill. There is a linear sequence in which one organism or plant is consumed by the other and this is known as the food chain. This photo shows a food chain that begins with a primary producer and ends with a quaternary consumer.

By eating and excreting, decomposers return nutrients from dead organisms to the soil, nourishing plants that start the chains again. Much of the ocean remains unexplored, and food chains in water-based environments are often complex and surprise us Earth's inhabitants. And finally, it is followed by the quaternary consumer, the top of the food chain, who could be a falcon. The arrow points to the upper trophic level of the food chain, which means that it means what eats the organism that points in the opposite direction.

There, microbes that never saw the sun extracted nutrients from compounds emitted into water from deep in the Earth's crust and produced chemicals that created entirely new food webs that had never been dreamed of on the surface. In the vast animal kingdom, food and energy travel to various levels, and to understand them in detail, let's take a look at how the terrestrial ecosystem works. In general, food chains are made up of primary producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiary consumers and quaternary consumers. A variety of food chains are intertwined to form a food web, which is the largest and most complex form of energy transfer sequence.

The main source of food in the food chain are plants, since they use solar energy to produce food through the process of photosynthesis. In technical terms, the food chain is the sequence through which energy transfer takes place within a particular ecosystem. The main source of energy is the sun and plants or producers use sunlight to produce their food through the process of photosynthesis. .

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