Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Consumers are typically viewed as predatory animals such as meat-eaters. However, herbivorous animals and parasitic fungi are also consumers. To be a consumer, an organism does not necessarily need to be carnivorous; it could only eat plants (producers), in which case it would be located in the first level of the food chain above the producers.
In other words, the producers, consumers, and decomposers are the main trophic levels. This chain of energy transferring from one species to another can continue several more times, but eventually ends. At the end of the food chain, decomposers such as bacteria and fungi break down dead plant and animal material into simple nutrients.
[10] [11] [12] Livestock animals are raised for meat across the world; they include (2011) around 1.4 billion cattle, 1.2 billion sheep and 1 billion domestic pigs. [12] [13] [14] Plants provide the greater part of food for humans, and for their domestic animals. They have played a key role in the history of world civilizations.
The three basic ways in which organisms get food are as producers, consumers, and decomposers. Producers are typically plants or algae. Plants and algae do not usually eat other organisms, but pull nutrients from the soil or the ocean and manufacture their own food using photosynthesis. For this reason, they are called primary producers
In particular, the biomass of consumers (copepods, krill, shrimp, forage fish) is larger than the biomass of primary producers. This happens because the ocean's primary producers are tiny phytoplankton which are r-strategists that grow and reproduce rapidly, so a small mass can have a fast rate of primary production.
Aquatic communities are often dominated by producers that are smaller than the consumers that have high growth rates. Aquatic producers, such as planktonic algae or aquatic plants, lack the large accumulation of secondary growth as exists in the woody trees of terrestrial ecosystems. However, they are able to reproduce quickly enough to support ...
For centuries, humans have relied on fruits, nuts, seeds, parts of foliage and pods from trees and shrubs in the forests to feed themselves and their livestock. [135] Over time, certain species have been selected for cultivation near homes or livestock to provide food or medicine.
Plant-animal interactions are important pathways for the transfer of energy within ecosystems, where both advantageous and unfavorable interactions support ecosystem health. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Plant-animal interactions can take on important ecological functions and manifest in a variety of combinations of favorable and unfavorable associations, for ...