Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
A consumer in a food chain is a living creature that eats organisms from a different population. A consumer is a heterotroph and a producer is an autotroph. Like sea angels, they take in organic moles by consuming other organisms, so they are commonly called consumers. Heterotrophs can be classified by what they usually eat as herbivores ...
Decomposer. Fungi acting as decomposers of a fallen tree branch. Decomposers are organisms that break down dead or decaying organisms; they carry out decomposition, a process possible by only certain kingdoms, such as fungi. [1] Like herbivores and predators, decomposers are heterotrophic, meaning that they use organic material to get their ...
Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. [1] All living organisms can be organized into producers and consumers, and those producers and consumers can further be organized into a food chain. [2][3] Each of the levels within the food chain is a trophic level. [1] In order to more efficiently show the quantity ...
A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Ecologists can broadly define all life forms as either autotrophs or heterotrophs, based on their trophic levels, the position that they occupy in the food web.
The numbered steps it takes for the initial source of energy starting from the bottom to reach the top of the food web is called the food chain length. [33] While food chain lengths can fluctuate, aquatic ecosystems start with primary producers that are consumed by primary consumers which are consumed by secondary consumers, and those in turn ...
Consumer–resource interactions are the core motif of ecological food chains or food webs, [1] and are an umbrella term for a variety of more specialized types of biological species interactions including prey-predator (see predation), host-parasite (see parasitism), plant-herbivore and victim-exploiter systems.
A nutrient cycle (or ecological recycling) is the movement and exchange of inorganic and organic matter back into the production of matter. Energy flow is a unidirectional and noncyclic pathway, whereas the movement of mineral nutrients is cyclic. Mineral cycles include the carbon cycle, sulfur cycle, nitrogen cycle, water cycle, phosphorus ...