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An example of a topological food web (image courtesy of USDA) [1]. The soil food web is the community of organisms living all or part of their lives in the soil. It describes a complex living system in the soil and how it interacts with the environment, plants, and animals.
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.
One way of mapping terrestrial (land) biomes around the world. A biome (/ ˈ b aɪ. oʊ m /) is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, and animal life.It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate.
The pyramid of energy represents how much energy, initially from the sun, is retained or stored in the form of new biomass at each trophic level in an ecosystem. Typically, about 10% of the energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, thus preventing a large number of trophic levels.
The term "ecosystem" was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley. The term was coined by Arthur Roy Clapham, who came up with the word at Tansley's request. [6] Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment.
A structural diagram of the open ocean plankton ecosystem model of Fasham, Ducklow & McKelvie (1990). [1]An ecosystem model is an abstract, usually mathematical, representation of an ecological system (ranging in scale from an individual population, to an ecological community, or even an entire biome), which is studied to better understand the real system.
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The relationships between primary production and environmental conditions have helped account for variation within ecosystem types, allowing ecologists to demonstrate that energy flows more efficiently through aquatic ecosystems than terrestrial ecosystems due to the various bottom-up and top-down controls in play.