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A food web model is a network of food chains. Each food chain starts with a primary producer or autotroph, an organism, such as an alga or a plant, which is able to manufacture its own food. Next in the chain is an organism that feeds on the primary producer, and the chain continues in this way as a string of successive predators.
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.
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 reef flat is the shoreward, flat, broadest area of the reef. The reef flat is found in fairly shallow water and can be uncovered during low tide. This area of the reef is only slightly sloped towards the open ocean. [5] Since the reef flat is adjacent or nearly adjacent to land, it sustains the most damage from runoff and sediments.
A barrier reef can encircle an island, and once the island sinks below sea level a roughly circular atoll of growing coral continues to keep up with the sea level, forming a central lagoon. Should the land subside too quickly or sea level rise too fast, the coral dies as it is below its habitable depth. [1]
Those with the "sprawler" type are abundant in forereefs and on coral pinnacles. [14] Being a calcareous alga, Halimeda has been found to have good potential as a carbon sink and can play an important role in regulating the ocean's carbon budget. [20] Some species such as H. opuntia have been found to produce up to 54.37 g CaCO 3 m −1 yr −1 ...
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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 ...