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Within an ecological food chain, consumers are categorized into primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers. [3] Primary consumers are herbivores, feeding on plants or algae. Caterpillars, insects, grasshoppers, termites and hummingbirds are all examples of primary consumers because they only eat autotrophs (plants). There ...
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. [7] [8]
The pyramids are not necessarily upright. In some ecosystems, there can be more primary consumers than producers. A pyramid of numbers graphically shows the population, or abundance, in terms of the number of individual organisms involved at each level in a food chain. This shows the number of organisms in each trophic level without considering ...
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 ...
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.
In the simplest scheme, the first trophic level (level 1) is plants, then herbivores (level 2), and then carnivores (level 3). The trophic level equals one more than the chain length, which is the number of links connecting to the base. The base of the food chain (primary producers or detritivores) is set at zero.
In above ground food webs, energy moves from producers (plants) to primary consumers and then to secondary consumers (predators). The phrase, trophic level, refers to the different levels or steps in the energy pathway. In other words, the producers, consumers, and decomposers are the main trophic levels.
Animals that feed on primary consumers—carnivores—are secondary consumers. Each of these constitutes a trophic level. [15] The sequence of consumption—from plant to herbivore, to carnivore—forms a food chain. Real systems are much more complex than this—organisms will generally feed on more than one form of food, and may feed at more ...