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In a detrital web, plant and animal matter is broken down by decomposers, e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detritivores and then carnivores. [69] There are often relationships between the detrital web and the grazing web. Mushrooms produced by decomposers in the detrital web become a food source for deer, squirrels, and mice in the ...
Complex food webs may be more stable if the interaction strengths are weak [22] and soil food webs appear to consist of many weak interactions and a few strong ones. [21] Donor controlled food webs may be inherently more stable, because it is difficult for primary consumers to overtax their resources. [25]
Other compounds, such as fatty acids, can also be used to trace food web connections between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. [ 68 ] Stable carbon isotope ratios (ratio of carbon 13 ( 13 C) to carbon 12 ( 12 C)), are one of the most common methods used to measure the energy inputs and sources for aquatic ecosystems, and can be used to track ...
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 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 ...
The concept of cross-boundary subsidies developed out of a merging of ideas from the studies of landscape ecology and food web ecology. The ideas from landscape ecology allow the study of population, community, and food web dynamics to incorporate spatial relationships between landscape elements into an understanding of such dynamics (Polis et al. 1997).
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...
In addition to being shaped by aspects of climate, intertidal habitats—especially intertidal zonation patterns—are strongly influenced by species interactions, such as predation, competition, facilitation, and indirect interactions. Ultimately, these interactions feed into the food web structure, described above.