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The polar regions are characterised by truncated food webs, and the role of viruses in ecosystem function is likely to be even greater than elsewhere in the marine food web. Their diversity is still relatively under-explored, and the way in which they affect polar communities is not well understood, [ 139 ] particularly in nutrient cycling.
For example, human food webs, agricultural food webs, detrital food webs, marine food webs, aquatic food webs, soil food webs, Arctic (or polar) food webs, terrestrial food webs, and microbial food webs. These characterizations stem from the ecosystem concept, which assumes that the phenomena under investigation (interactions and feedback loops ...
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 ...
Polar ecology is the relationship between plants and animals in a polar environment. Polar environments are in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Arctic regions are in the Northern Hemisphere , and it contains land and the islands that surrounds it.
They are central to the functioning of ecosystems, the regulation of disease, and the maintenance of biodiversity. [13] When introduced to subarctic islands, for example, Arctic foxes' predation of seabirds has been shown to turn grassland into the tundra. [14] Such wide-ranging effects on lower levels of an ecosystem are termed trophic ...
Any impacts to key species in the food web can cause exponentially devastating effects on the rest of the food chain as a whole, as they will no longer have a reliable food source. If these larger organisms no longer have any source of nutrients, they too will eventually die off, and the entire Arctic ocean ecosystem will be affected.
This means primary producers become the starting point in the food chain for heterotroph organisms that do eat other organisms. Some marine primary producers are specialised bacteria and archaea which are chemotrophs, making their own food by gathering around hydrothermal vents and cold seeps and using chemosynthesis.
Within the Arctic, estimates of the contribution of sea ice algae to total primary production ranges from 3-25%, up to 50-57% in high Arctic regions. [ 19 ] [ 20 ] Sea ice algae accumulate biomass rapidly, often at the base of sea ice, and grow to form algal mats that are consumed by amphipods such as krill and copepods .