A food chain is the transfer of food energy from plants to one animal and then to another animal. Most food chains start with green plants that produce food energy from the Sun. Then one animal eats the plant and another animal eats that animal. The green plants in a food chain are called producers.
Most organisms can eat and be eaten by many different animals. A food chain could not demonstrate this. food networks show all of these connections. They are more complicated but more precise.
A food chain shows how every living thing obtains its food. Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals. For example, a simple food chain links trees and shrubs, giraffes (which feed on trees and shrubs) and lions (who eat giraffes). Each link in this chain is food for the next link.
All food chains start with energy from the Sun. This energy is captured by plants. Therefore, the living part of a food chain always begins with plant life and ends with an animal. Most animals are part of more than one food chain and eat more than one type of food to meet their food and energy needs.
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. 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 food chain is a linear sequence of organisms in which nutrients and energy are transferred from one organism to another. Animals are called consumers because they don't produce their own food, but instead eat or consume other organisms.
In a chain of parasites, a smaller organism consumes part of a larger host and may be parasitized by even smaller organisms. Lions are found at the top of the food web, meaning that no other type of animal eats them (except decomposers when they die). These must then be intertwined and glued together to form a chain of species in which one eats the other. Plants are called producers because they can use light energy from the Sun to produce food (sugar) from carbon dioxide and water.
As the food chain shortens, the total amount of energy available to end consumers increases. There can't be too many links in a single food chain because the animals at the end of the chain wouldn't get enough food (and therefore energy) to stay alive. These decomposers accelerate the decomposition process that returns mineral salts to the food chain for plants to absorb as nutrients. Since energy, in the form of heat, is lost at each trophic level or step, chains normally cover no more than four or five trophic levels.
First demonstrate a food chain, a simple interdependence, linking the student with the solar card (the source of all energy) to the student with the grass card to the student with the zebra card to the student with the lion card. The flow of nutrients and energy from one organism to another at different trophic levels forms a food chain.
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