A food chain is a linear sequence of organisms through which nutrients and energy pass as one organism eats another. In a food chain, each organism occupies a different trophic level, defined by how many energy transfers separate it from the basic input of the chain.
What is food chain in simple answer?
The food chain is a linear sequence of organisms where nutrients and energy is transferred from one organism to the other. This occurs when one organism consumes another organism. It begins with the producer organism, follows the chain and ends with the decomposer organism.
What is food chain definition and examples?
(a) The sequence of living organisms in a community in which one organism consumes another organism to transfer food energy is called a food chain. An example of a simple food chain is that operating in a grassland: Grass (Producer)⟶Deer (Herbivore)⟶Lion(Carnivore)
What is another word for food chain?
In this page you can discover 3 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for food-chain, like: food cycle, food-web and trophic-level.
What is the food chain in biology? – Related Questions
What is a good sentence for food chain?
The food chain affects us all; only a few will be eaten by cannibals. In caves, the basis of the food chain is organic matter from the surface. These measures include the compulsory slaughter of cattle suspected of having BSE and the removal from the food chain of their milk and carcasses.
What is a simple definition of food web?
A food web consists of all the food chains in a single ecosystem. Each living thing in an ecosystem is part of multiple food chains. Each food chain is one possible path that energy and nutrients may take as they move through the ecosystem.
What are the 3 types of food chain?
Generally a food chain ends with decomposers. The three major types of food chains in an ecosystem are Grazing Food Chain, Parasitic Food Chain and Detritus Food Chain.
What is food chain give an example class 6?
Theory: In a forest, the deer eats grass, the tiger, in turn, eats the deer. In an ecosystem, there is a chain like relationship present between organisms that inhabit the particular ecosystem. The sequence of living creatures that represent who eats whom in an ecosystem is called a food chain.
What are the 4 food chains?
It is a way of classifying animals, plants, and fungi that eat other organisms in order to survive. The four levels in this food chain are primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiary consumers, and finally decomposers or phytoremediators.
How does food chain work?
A food chain describes how energy and nutrients move through an ecosystem. At the basic level there are plants that produce the energy, then it moves up to higher-level organisms like herbivores. After that when carnivores eat the herbivores, energy is transferred from one to the other.
How do you explain a food chain to a child?
Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals. For example, a simple food chain links the trees & shrubs, the giraffes (that eat trees & shrubs), and the lions (that eat the giraffes). Each link in this chain is food for the next link. A food chain always starts with plant life and ends with an animal.
Who is top of food chain?
“Apex” is a Latin term that means peak or top. Apex predators, also known as alpha predators, are the animals at the top of the food chain and do not have any natural predators in their environment. Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, meaning they occupy the highest trophic levels.
Where is human in food chain?
Humans are said to be at the top of the food chain because they eat plants and animals of all kinds but are not eaten consistently by any animals. The human food chain starts with plants. Plants eaten by humans are called fruits and vegetables, and when they eat these plants, humans are primary consumers.
What are the types of food chains?
There are two types of food chains: the grazing food chain, beginning with autotrophs, and the detrital food chain, beginning with dead organic matter (Smith & Smith 2009).
What are animals called in a food chain?
Plants and algae (plant-like organisms that live in water) are able to make their own food using energy from the sun. These organisms are called producers because they produce their own food. Some animals eat these producers. These animals are called consumers because they consume something else to get their food.
Are humans Top of the food chain?
At the top of the scale are meat-eaters that don’t have any predators themselves, such as polar bears and orca whales. Instead, we sit somewhere between pigs and anchovies, scientists reported recently. That puts us right in the middle of the chain, with polar bears and orca whales occupying the highest position.
Why food chain is important to our ecosystem?
Food chains are important because they show the intricate relationships in ecosystems. They can reveal how each organism depends on someone else for survival. Food chains also display what happens when a problem occurs and a producer or consumer is lost. Entire communities can collapse.
Where does the food chain start from?
Explanation: A food chain generally starts with producers. Plants or photosynthetic organisms are the main producers. They trap the energy from sunlight and use it to produce food.
What ends a food chain?
Thus the living part of a food chain always starts with plant life and ends with an animal. Plants are called producers because they are able to use light energy from the sun to produce food (sugar) from carbon dioxide and water.
Why do food chains start with plants?
Most food chains start with a green plant, because plants can make their food by photosynthesis. A living thing that eats other plants and animals is called a consumer.
Why is energy lost in food chains?
Not all the energy is passed from one level of the food chain to the next. About 90 per cent of energy may be lost as heat (released during respiration), through movement, or in materials that the consumer does not digest. The energy stored in undigested materials can be transferred to decomposers.