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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.
Organotrophs use organic compounds as electron/hydrogen donors. Lithotrophs use inorganic compounds as electron/hydrogen donors.. The electrons or hydrogen atoms from reducing equivalents (electron donors) are needed by both phototrophs and chemotrophs in reduction-oxidation reactions that transfer energy in the anabolic processes of ATP synthesis (in heterotrophs) or biosynthesis (in autotrophs).
Heterotrophs are organisms that obtain nutrients by consuming the carbon of other organisms, while autotrophs are organisms that produce their own nutrients from the carbon of inorganic substances like carbon dioxide. Mixotrophs are organisms that can be heterotrophs and autotrophs, including some plankton and carnivorous plants.
Heterotrophs occupy the second and third tropic levels of the food chain while autotrophs occupy the first trophic level. [7] Heterotrophs may be subdivided according to their energy source. If the heterotroph uses chemical energy, it is a chemoheterotroph (e.g., humans and mushrooms).
Heterotrophic nutrition is a mode of nutrition in which organisms depend upon other organisms for food to survive. They can't make their own food like Green plants. Heterotrophic organisms have to take in all the organic substances they need to survive. All animals, certain types of fungi, and non-photosynthesizing plants are heterotrophic.
When autotrophs are eaten by heterotrophs, i.e., consumers such as animals, the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins contained in them become energy sources for the heterotrophs. [12] Proteins can be made using nitrates, sulfates, and phosphates in the soil. [13] [14]
A food web depicts a collection of polyphagous heterotrophic consumers that network and cycle the flow of energy and nutrients from a productive base of self-feeding autotrophs. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] The base or basal species in a food web are those species without prey and can include autotrophs or saprophytic detritivores (i.e., the community of ...
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.