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A marine food web is a food web of marine life. At the base of the ocean food web are single-celled algae and other plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton . The second trophic level ( primary consumers ) is occupied by zooplankton which feed off the phytoplankton .
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.
There are two major food chains: The primary food chain is the energy coming from autotrophs and passed on to the consumers; and the second major food chain is when carnivores eat the herbivores or decomposers that consume the autotrophic energy. [16] Consumers are broken down into primary consumers, secondary consumers and tertiary consumers.
Ocean or marine biomass, in a reversal of terrestrial biomass, can increase at higher trophic levels. In the ocean, the food chain typically starts with phytoplankton, and follows the course: Phytoplankton → zooplankton → predatory zooplankton → filter feeders → predatory fish
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.
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 ...
Few species were originally considered to feed directly on seagrass leaves (partly because of their low nutritional content), but scientific reviews and improved working methods have shown that seagrass herbivory is an important link in the food chain, feeding hundreds of species, including green turtles, dugongs, manatees, fish, geese, swans ...
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 ...