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A freshwater aquatic food web. The blue arrows show a complete food chain (algae → daphnia → gizzard shad → largemouth bass → great blue heron). A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community.
Food chain in a Swedish lake. Osprey feed on northern pike, which in turn feed on perch which eat bleak which eat crustaceans.. A food chain is a linear network of links in a food web, often starting with an autotroph (such as grass or algae), also called a producer, and typically ending at an apex predator (such as grizzly bears or killer whales), detritivore (such as earthworms and woodlice ...
Oxsjön, a lake in Sweden. Freshwater biology focuses on environments like lakes. A pond in the Oconee River Floodplain in Georgia, whose surface is covered in duckweed but still contains fish. Freshwater biology is the scientific biological study of freshwater ecosystems and is a branch of limnology. This field seeks to understand the ...
There are three basic types of freshwater ecosystems: Lentic (slow moving water, including pools, ponds, and lakes), lotic (faster moving water, for example streams and rivers) and wetlands (areas where the soil is saturated or inundated for at least part of the time). Limnology (and its branch freshwater biology) is a study about freshwater ...
Decomposers are often left off food webs, but if included, they mark the end of a food chain. [6] Thus food chains start with primary producers and end with decay and decomposers. Since decomposers recycle nutrients, leaving them so they can be reused by primary producers, they are sometimes regarded as occupying their own trophic level.
The two main types of aquatic ecosystems are marine ecosystems and freshwater ecosystems. [1] Freshwater ecosystems may be lentic (slow moving water, including pools, ponds, and lakes); lotic (faster moving water, for example streams and rivers); and wetlands (areas where the soil is saturated or inundated for at least part of the time). [2]
This stream operating together with its environment can be thought of as forming a river ecosystem. River ecosystems are flowing waters that drain the landscape, and include the biotic (living) interactions amongst plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as abiotic (nonliving) physical and chemical interactions of its many parts.
The freshwater ecoregion system is similar to that for terrestrial ecoregions. The Earth's land surface is divided into eight terrestrial biogeographic realms or ecozones, which contain hundreds of smaller ecoregions. Ecoregions are classified into biomes or major habitat types, which have similar climates and vegetation types. The freshwater ...