Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The microbial food web refers to the combined trophic interactions among microbes in aquatic environments. These microbes include viruses, bacteria, algae, heterotrophic protists (such as ciliates and flagellates). [1] In aquatic ecosystems, microbial food webs are essential because they form the basis for the cycling of nutrients and energy.
Some nutrients can be stored – the fat-soluble vitamins – while others are required more or less continuously. Poor health can be caused by a lack of required nutrients, or for some vitamins and minerals, too much of a required nutrient. Essential nutrients cannot be synthesized by the body, and must be obtained from food.
A nutrient is a substance used by an organism to survive, grow and reproduce. The requirement for dietary nutrient intake applies to animals, plants, fungi and protists. Nutrients can be incorporated into cells for metabolic purposes or excreted by cells to create non-cellular structures such as hair, scales, feathers, or exoskeletons.
In plants, it has important roles in nucleic acid metabolism, carbohydrate and protein metabolism, cell wall synthesis, cell wall structure, membrane integrity and function, and phenol metabolism. [20] Probably essential to animals, for reasons not well understood. [21] Toxic to both animals and plants. [22] bromine: 35: 5
Protein is a nutrient needed by the human body for growth and maintenance. Aside from water, proteins are the most abundant kind of molecules in the body. Protein can be found in all cells of the body and is the major structural component of all cells in the body, especially muscle. This also includes body organs, hair and skin.
A simplified food web illustrating a three-trophic food chain (producers-herbivores-carnivores) linked to decomposers. The movement of mineral nutrients through the food chain, into the mineral nutrient pool, and back into the trophic system illustrates ecological recycling. The movement of energy, in contrast, is unidirectional and noncyclic.
The aquatic microbial loop is a marine trophic pathway which incorporates dissolved organic carbon into the food chain.. The microbial loop describes a trophic pathway where, in aquatic systems, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is returned to higher trophic levels via its incorporation into bacterial biomass, and then coupled with the classic food chain formed by phytoplankton-zooplankton-nekton.
Food chain length is another way of describing food webs as a measure of the number of species encountered as energy or nutrients move from the plants to top predators. [41]: 269 There are different ways of calculating food chain length depending on what parameters of the food web dynamic are being considered: connectance, energy, or ...