Food chain
hideFood chains, also called food webs, describe the eating relationships between species within an ecosystem or a particular living place. Many types of food chains or webs are applicable depending on habitat or environmental factors.
Organisms are connected to the organisms they consume by lines representing the direction of organism or energy transfer. It also shows how the energy from the producer is given to the consumer. Typically a food chain or food web refers to a graph where only connections are recorded, and a food network or ecosystem network refers to a network where the connections are given weights representing the quantity of nutrients or energy being transferred.
Sometimes, on a food chain, each animal is separated with an arrow. If it is pointing right, it means "is eaten by" or "is consumed by".
Every single food chain known to Man begins with a type of autotroph, whether it be a plant or some kind of unicellular organism.
For more information about Food chain, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with food web
Second Law of Thermodynamics May Explain Economic Evolution
Nov 02, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Terms such as the "invisible hand," laissez-faire policy, and free-market principles suggest that economic growth and decline in capitalist societies seem to be somehow self-regulated. Now, ...
Web page ranking algorithm detects critical species in ecosystems
Sep 04, 2009 |
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Google's algorithm for ranking web-pages can be used to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems. Drs. Stefano Allesina and Mercedes Pascual find that "PageRank" can be applied to the study of food webs, ...
Scientists find universal rules for food-web stability
Aug 06, 2009 |
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The findings, published in this week's issue of Science, conclude that food-web stability is enhanced when many diverse predator-prey links connect high and intermediate trophic levels. The computations also reveal that s ...
High construction cost for cycads
Jul 23, 2009 |
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Self-sustaining organisms like plants possess the ability to synthesize their own food using inorganic materials. Plants use water and carbon dioxide to begin this process in their green tissues. The leaf ...
Researchers study 'fundamental, amazing change' in Great Lakes (w/ Video)
Jul 16, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The Great Lakes are in the midst of a remarkable ecological transformation, driven largely by the blitzkrieg advance of two closely related species of non-native mussels.
NOAA bans commercial harvesting of krill
Jul 13, 2009 |
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today published a final rule in the Federal Register prohibiting the harvesting of krill in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coasts of California, Oregon, ...
Is the Pacific Ocean's chemistry killing sea life?
Jun 21, 2009 |
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The collapse began rather unspectacularly. In 2005, when most of the millions of Pacific oysters in this tree-lined estuary failed to reproduce, Washington's shellfish growers largely shrugged it off.
Who will pick up the bill? Possible job cuts and revenue loss as a result of ocean acidification
Jun 01, 2009 |
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Ocean acidification, a direct result of increased CO2 emission, is set to change the Earth's marine ecosystems forever and may have a direct impact on our economy, resulting in substantial revenue declines and job losses.
Climate change threatens Lake Baikal's unique biota
May 01, 2009 |
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Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's largest and most biologically diverse lake, faces the prospect of severe ecological disruption as a result of climate change, according to an analysis by a joint US-Russian team in the May ...
Mighty diatoms: Global climate feedback from microscopic algae
Mar 17, 2009 |
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Tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain called diatoms suck up nearly a quarter of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide, yet research by Michigan State University scientists suggests they could become less able to "sequester" ...
Tiny ecosystem may shed light on climate change
Biology /
Dec 15, 2008 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researchers have created a microbial ecosystem smaller than a stick of gum that sheds new light on the plankton-eat-plankton world at the bottom of the aquatic food chain.
