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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.
Generalized food web of waterbirds from Chesapeake Bay. A food web is the archetypal ecological network. Plants capture solar energy and use it to synthesize simple sugars during photosynthesis. As plants grow, they accumulate nutrients and are eaten by grazing herbivores, and the energy is transferred through a chain of organisms by consumption.
The crowns of the dominant trees receive most of the sunlight. This is the most productive part of the trees, where maximum food is produced. The canopy forms a shady, protective "umbrella" over the rest of the forest. Emergent layer exists in a tropical rain forest and is composed of a few scattered trees that tower over the canopy. [39]
Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth" and the "world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered there. [2] Rainforests as well as endemic rainforest species are rapidly disappearing due to deforestation, the resulting habitat loss and pollution of the atmosphere. [3]
Tropical ecology is the study of the relationships between the biotic and abiotic components of the tropics, or the area of the Earth that lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn (23.4378° N and 23.4378° S, respectively). The tropical climate experiences hot, humid weather and rainfall year-round.
Additionally, they tested that any change in food web properties caused by foundation species occurs via random facilitation of species throughout the entire food web or via targeted facilitation of specific species that belong to certain trophic levels or functional groups. It was found that species at the base of the food web are less ...
Clements suggested only comparisons to very simple organisms. [3] Later ecologists developed this idea that the ecological community is a " superorganism " and even sometimes claimed that communities could be homologous to complex organisms and sought to define a single climax-type for each area.
The Hawaiian tropical rainforests are a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion in the Hawaiian Islands. They cover an area of 6,700 km 2 (2,600 sq mi) in the windward lowlands and montane regions of the islands. [1] Coastal mesic forests are found at elevations from sea level to 300 m (980 ft). [2]