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In a detrital web, plant and animal matter is broken down by decomposers, e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detritivores and then carnivores. [69] There are often relationships between the detrital web and the grazing web. Mushrooms produced by decomposers in the detrital web become a food source for deer, squirrels, and mice in the ...
A marine food web is a food web of marine life. ... 10.1371/journal.pone.0000295; Polar webs ... grazing, viral lysis, detrital route), but all eventually result in ...
Benthic-pelagic coupling are processes that connect the benthic zone and the pelagic zone through the exchange of energy, mass, or nutrients. These processes play a prominent role in both freshwater and marine ecosystems and are influenced by a number of chemical, biological, and physical forces that are crucial to functions from nutrient cycling to energy transfer in food webs.
Detrital production from clam excretion and death may fuel bacterial production, which may be circulated into the detrital food web, or microbial loop. While the recycled nutrients may support some phytoplankton growth, it ultimately feeds back to increased C. amurensis populations.
Some diatoms, such as pseudo-nitzschia, release the neurotoxin domoic acid, poisoning grazing fish. [48] If diatoms grow preferentially during iron fertilization experiments, sustained fertilizations could enhance domoic acid poisoning in the marine food web near fertilized patches. [48] Global dust deposition from wind.
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 observed values of connectance in empirical food webs appear to be constrained by the variability of the physical environment, [4] by habitat type, [5] which will reflect on an organism's diet breadth driven by optimal foraging behaviour. This ultimately links the structure of these ecological networks to the behaviour of individual organisms.
Several recent studies have suggested non-trophic species interactions such as habitat modification and mutualisms can be important determinants of food web structures. However, it remains unclear whether these findings generalize across ecosystems, and whether non-trophic interactions affect food webs randomly, or affect specific trophic ...