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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).
Herbivory is of extreme ecological importance and prevalence among insects.Perhaps one third (or 500,000) of all described species are herbivores. [4] Herbivorous insects are by far the most important animal pollinators, and constitute significant prey items for predatory animals, as well as acting as major parasites and predators of plants; parasitic species often induce the formation of galls.
Keystone herbivores keep vegetation populations in check and allow for a greater diversity of both herbivores and plants. [63] When an invasive herbivore or plant enters the system, the balance is thrown off and the diversity can collapse to a monotaxon system. [63] The back and forth relationship of plant defense and herbivore offense drives ...
A food web starts at trophic level 1 with primary producers such as plants, can move to herbivores at level 2, carnivores at level 3 or higher, and typically finish with apex predators at level 4 or 5. The path along the chain can form either a one-way flow or a part of a wider food "web".
Animals and other heterotrophs must eat in order to survive — carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, omnivores consume a mixture of both plant and animal matter, and detritivores eat detritus. Fungi digest organic matter outside their bodies as opposed to animals that digest their food inside their bodies.
Animals that only eat plants are called herbivores, with those that mostly just eat fruits known as frugivores, [50] leaves, while shoot eaters are folivores (pandas) and wood eaters termed xylophages (termites). [51] Frugivores include a diverse range of species from annelids to elephants, chimpanzees and many birds.
For example, predators eating herbivores indirectly influence the control and regulation of primary production in plants. Although the predators do not eat the plants directly, they regulate the population of herbivores that are directly linked to plant trophism. The net effect of direct and indirect relations is called trophic cascades.
Trophallaxis: eating food regurgitated by another animal; Zoopharmacognosy: self-medication by eating plants, soils, and insects to treat and prevent disease. An opportunistic feeder sustains itself from a number of different food sources, because the species is behaviourally sufficiently flexible.