Food Chains and food webs A food chain or food web is a flow chart showing the feeding patterns

within a community. They show the flow of energy and matter through a community. This flow of energy is shown by, an arrow going from one organism to another. A food web is a set of interconnecting food chains. When drawing food webs the producers, which usually placed at the bottom of the food web. Herbivores are consumers that eat only plants eg rabbits Carnivores are consumers that eat only other animals eg a lion or a dingo Omnivores are animals ( consumers) that eat both plants and animals eg humans Each part of a foodchain or web is called a trophic level. Which means a feeding level Dingo Lettuce rabbit human Lion

In the above food web lettuce is the producer and is known as being at the 1st trophic level. The rabbit is a first order consumer, and this is the second trophic level Alteration to feed webs or chains can have far reaching consequences brought on by, factors such as human intervention, disease, natural disaster, seasonal changes, or increase/decrease in predator/prey numbers

Biomass Pyramins The total amount of mass in a community is known as bio mass, standard matter is lost from the community at each tropic level the bio mass of the producers is usually greater than the first order consumers etc. This can be shown in a bio mass pyramid. Disease or drought can rapidly decrease the plant bio mass and therefore consumer bio mass maybe larger for a while however, usually they die because the small plant bio mass cannot provide sufficient energy to support the consumers Energy pyramids are slightly different they show the amount of energy at each trophic level, they are similar th biomass pyramids because energy is transferred throughout a community as food, the lower the organism, on the food chain, the more energy it has available to it.

Eg: Pyramids of numbers in grassland ecosystem

Eg: Pyramid of biomass in a grss land ecosystem