Food Web and Example in

Food Web and Example In any environment, there is a synergistic relationship between the atmosphere, flora and fauna. A food web is a way to describe the feeding connections -- or what eats what in the ecosystem. Scientists put life forms in this system into two levels: autotrophs and heterotrophs. Autotrophs produce organic material from inorganic substances -- both minerals and gases like carbon dioxide. The chemical reactions need energy, which usually comes from a combination of the sun causing photosynthesis in plants -- depending on the food web.

A food web is really a more simplistic way of looking at a particular biome or ecosystem, and does show that there are a number of inter-relationships between flora and fauna; and the potential of negative results if one or more species is eliminated (e.g. man's intentions of reducing predators having negative effects on anything below it in the food chain).

Simple models show the relationships between flora and fauna, and more complex food webs show the relationships between the quantity and robustness of each of the creatures or plants in more detail. For instance, in a simple food web, we may have a group of herbivores, but in a more complex food web, that group is further broken down into type, quality, robustness and specific place in the food chain.

Also, within each food web, there are even more micro versions of the web - like a soil food web as a macrocosm of a forest food web, which would be a different than a desert or arid soil food web (Pimm, et.al., 1991). In essence, a basic premise of the food web is that there are four basic occupants into a food web: 1) Energy (Sun, usually); 2) Producers (autotrophs), 3) Nutrients, and 4) Heterotrophs.

Energy moves between producers and consumers/decomposers, and the nutrients from soil or air (minerals, etc.) move into the producers and the consumers. All are linked together, regardless of the biome, but food levels have tropic levels and positions. This starts with a basal species that feeds on no other living creature, then moves up to where something consumes something else in order to survive: (Yellow line is transfer of energy; red arrow is transfer of nutrients). Simple Biome Food Web of an Arctic shore area 1.

Within our example, the primary producers are the zooplankton and phytoplankton which are consumed in part by every other animal in the food web except the top carnivore. The top consumers are the carnivores (polar bears, orca) that subsist on the top mammal and bird consumers (seals, walruses, penguins). This level also consumes the fish level, but also, at times the crustacean (D) levels. 2. The higher up the food web the more expenditure of energy to maintain.