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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.
Generalized food web of waterbirds from Chesapeake Bay. A food web is the archetypal ecological network. Plants capture solar energy and use it to synthesize simple sugars during photosynthesis. As plants grow, they accumulate nutrients and are eaten by grazing herbivores, and the energy is transferred through a chain of organisms by consumption.
In the marine environment, plankton (which includes bacteria, archaea, algae, protozoa and microscopic fungi) [34] provide a crucial source of food to many small and large aquatic organisms. Without bacteria, life would scarcely exist because bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen into nutritious ammonia .
An example of a topological food web (image courtesy of USDA) [1] The soil food web is the community of organisms living all or part of their lives in the soil. It describes a complex living system in the soil and how it interacts with the environment, plants, and animals. Food webs describe the transfer of energy between species in an ecosystem.
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 ...
From one year to another, ecosystems experience variation in their biotic and abiotic environments. A drought, a colder than usual winter, and a pest outbreak all are short-term variability in environmental conditions. Animal populations vary from year to year, building up during resource-rich periods and crashing as they overshoot their food ...
The large environmental impact of agriculture – such as its greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation, deforestation and pollinator decline effects – make the food system a critical set of processes that need to be addressed for climate change mitigation and a stable healthy environment. A sustainable food system is a type of food system ...
Ethnoecology is a field of environmental anthropology, and has derived much of its characteristics from classic as well as more modern theorists. Franz Boas was one of the first anthropologists to question unilineal evolution , the belief that all societies follow the same, unavoidable path towards Western civilization .