Define food chain

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Definition Consumer is a category that belongs within the food chain of an ecosystem. It refers predominantly to animals. Consumers are unable to make their own energy, and instead rely on the consumption and digestion of producers or other consumers, or both, to survive. Consumer Explained Consumers are found in food chains, where they are joined by two other groups – producers and decomposers. All plants are producers as they produce their own energy from sunlight and nutrients via photosynthesis. Plants make up the primary trophic level of the food chain. Herbivores – animals which only eat plants – consume vegetation from which they are able to produce energy. Herbivores are unable to make their own energy and are known as consumers. As herbivores only ever eat producers, they are primary consumers in the second trophic level of the food chain. Food chains do not need to include whole animals. In the human food chain, vegetarians who eat dairy are omnivores, and vegans who eat neither dairy nor eggs are the equivalent of primary consumers. Categorization within a food chain may also be transient, as with calves that drink their mother’s milk as omnivores, then become herbivores after weaning. The position a consumer holds within the food chain can be manipulated by disease, deforestation, the seasons, biodiversity, human encroachment into natural habitats, and many other variables. Additionally, multiple species can be found within each category and trophic level. When...

A food chain shows the feeding relationship between organisms. They always start with an organism that makes food. The producer. In this example, it's grass. The first consumer in the chain, in this case the grasshopper, is also called the primary consumer. A consumer that only eats plants is called a herbivore. The frog is the secondary consumer. Because it only eats other animals, it's called a carnivore. The hawk is the tertiary consumer and, in this chain, the term given to the organism found at the top of a food chain, which is not preyed upon. It is important to remember that the arrows in food chains show the flow of energy from one organism to another. On planet Earth, there are many different food chains that often overlap and interconnect, that play their part in the world's ecosystems. Food chains always start with a producer. This is usually a green plant or algae that completes photosynthesis to store energy from sunlight as glucose. Grass is the producer in the grass → rabbit → fox food chain. Photosynthesis provides the energy for most life on Earth. A primary consumer eats a producer. The rabbit is the primary consumer in the example food chain. This is in turn eaten by a secondary consumer, which is the fox. After this might be a tertiary consumer (which eats a secondary consumer) and possibly a quaternary consumer (which eats a tertiary consumer), but not in this example. Animals that are hunted and eaten are prey, and these are consumed by predators. The...

Organisms of different species can interact in many ways. They can compete, or they can be symbionts—longterm partners with a close association. Or, of course, they can do what we so often see in nature programs: one of them can eat the other—chomp! That is, they can form one of the links in a food chain. In ecology, a food chain is a series of organisms that eat one another so that energy and nutrients flow from one to the next. For example, if you had a hamburger for lunch, you might be part of a food chain that looks like this: grass → \rightarrow → right arrow cow → \rightarrow → right arrow human. But what if you had lettuce on your hamburger? In that case, you're also part of a food chain that looks like this: lettuce → \rightarrow → right arrow human. As this example illustrates, we can't always fully describe what an organism—such as a human—eats with one linear pathway. For situations like the one above, we may want to use a food web that consists of many intersecting food chains and represents the different things an organism can eat and be eaten by. Autotrophs are the foundation of every ecosystem on the planet. That may sound dramatic, but it's no exaggeration! Autotrophs form the base of food chains and food webs, and the energy they capture from light or chemicals sustains all the other organisms in the community. When we're talking about their role in food chains, we can call autotrophs producers. Heterotrophs, also known as other-feeders, can't capture ligh...

The food chain describes who eats whom in the wild. Every living thing—from one-celled algae to giant blue whales—needs food to survive. Each food chain is a possible pathway that energy and nutrients can follow through the ecosystem. For example, grass produces its own food from sunlight. A rabbit eats the grass. A fox eats the rabbit. When the fox dies, bacteria break down its body, returning it to the soil where it provides nutrients for plants like grass. Of course, many different animals eat grass, and rabbits can eat other plants besides grass. Foxes, in turn, can eat many types of animals and plants. Each of these living things can be a part of multiple food chains. All of the interconnected and overlapping food chains in an ecosystem make up a food web. Trophic Levels Organisms in food chains are grouped into categories called trophic levels. Roughly speaking, these levels are divided into producers (first trophic level), consumers (second, third, and fourth trophic levels), and decomposers. Producers, also known as autotrophs, make their own food. They make up the first level of every food chain. Autotrophs are usually plants or one-celled organisms. Nearly all autotrophs use a process called photosynthesis to create “food” (a nutrient called glucose) from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. Plants are the most familiar type of autotroph, but there are many other kinds. Algae, whose larger forms are known as seaweed, are autotrophic. Phytoplankton, tiny organisms...