Food webs illustrate energy flow from primary producers to primary consumers (herbivores), and from primary consumers to secondary consumers (carnivores). Under top-down control, the abundance or biomass of lower trophic levels depends on effects from consumers at higher trophic levels.

A food chain is a linear sequence of organisms through which nutrients and energy pass as one organism eats another. The levels in the food chain are producers, primary consumers, higher-level consumers, and finally decomposers. These levels are used to describe ecosystem structure and dynamics.

Why are fungi and bacteria important to energy transfer in an ecosystem? They are important because they break down organisms and recycle the nutrients back to the soil and they help the animals get food to survive.

The order of a food chain looks like this: sun (or light energy), primary producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers.

A food chain only follows just one path as animals find food. eg: A hawk eats a snake, which has eaten a frog, which has eaten a grasshopper, which has eaten grass. A food web shows the many different paths plants and animals are connected. eg: A hawk might also eat a mouse, a squirrel, a frog or some other animal.

Bacteria have been the very first organisms to live on Earth. They made their appearance 3 billion years ago in the waters of the first oceans. At first, there were only anaerobic heterotrophic bacteria (the primordial atmosphere was virtually oxygen-free).

A food chain is a linear diagram showing how energy moves through an ecosystem. It shows only one pathway out of the many possibilities in a specific ecosystem.

Food Chain. A food chain shows you how one organism eats another and transfers its energy. For example, a zebra eats grass, and the zebra is eaten by the lion.

A food web (or food cycle) is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation (usually an image) of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Some of the organic matter eaten by heterotrophs, such as sugars, provides energy.

Answer Expert Verified. It would be highly unlikely to discover a food chain containing 10 links. Almost 90 percent of the energy obtained at one trophic level is lost when being transmitted to the other trophic level ( link in the food chain).

FOOD CHAINS ARE LINEAR, FOOD WEBS ARE A GROUP OF FOOD WEBS. FOOD WEBS ARE MORE USEFUL BECAUSE IT PROVIDES DIFFERENT ORGANISMS WITH MORE THE ONE SINGLE FOOD SOURCE TO SURVIVE.

It is rare to find food chains that have more than four or five links because the loss of energy limits the length of food chains. Therefore, after a limited number of trophic energy transfers, the amount of energy remaining in the food chain cannot support a higher trophic level.

Energy decreases in each successive trophic level, preventing more than four or five levels in a food chain. An ecosystem usually has two different types of food webs: a grazing food web based on photosynthetic plants or algae, along with a detrital food web based on decomposers (such as fungi).

Most food chains have no more than four or five links. There cannot be too many links in a single food chain because the animals at the end of the chain would not get enough food (and hence energy) to stay alive. These interconnected food chains form a food web.

A food chain always starts with a producer. This is an organism that makes its own food. 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.