Food Webs

An ecosystem is a community of independent organisms along

with the inorganic components (chiefly soil, water, air, and rocks)
that make up their environment. A biome is a large ecosystem,
characterized by its dominant life-formsfor example, the
Amazonian rain forest.
That portion of an ecosystem composed only of living things, as
opposed to the formerly living or never living components, is
known as a biological community. This community includes
creatures from all five kingdoms of living organisms (including
bacteria, algae, and fungi), whereas the term biota typically refers
only to plant and animal life within a biological community or
ecosystem. (For more on these subjects, see Ecosystems and
Ecology and Biological Communities.)

Trophic Levels
The organisms in a biological community are linked in their need
to obtain energy from food, which derives from the Sun through
plant life. (There are, however, some communities, in areas such
as deep-ocean rifts, that are not dependent on sunlight at all.)
The Sun's energy is electromagnetic and travels in the form of
radiation, which Earth receives as light and heat. Plants, known as
primary producers, convert this electromagnetic energy into
chemical energy through the process of photosynthesis.
The plants are eaten by herbivores (plant-eating animals), known
also as primary consumers, examples of which include squirrels,
rabbits, mice, deer, cows, horses, sheep, and seed-eating birds.
These creatures, in turn, are eaten by secondary consumers,
which are either carnivores, which are creatures that eat only
meat, or omnivorescreatures, such as humans, that eat meat
and plants.
There may even be tertiary, or third-level, consumers. These are
animals that eat secondary consumers; examples are mountain
lions and hawks, both of which eat such second-order consumers
as snakes and owls. Human societies that eat dogs or cats, as well
as those that engage in cannibalism, also behave as tertiary

consumers. (See Biological Communities for a biological

explanation of what otherwise is considered an abhorrent and
immoral practicenot to mention a dangerous one, due to the
risk of such diseases as kuru, a type of spongiform
encephalopathy.) In any case, the further along in the chain of
trophic levels or stages of the food web, the fewer consumers
there are.

ENERGY AND TROPHIC LEVELS.

It is fairly obvious that when a creature is "higher on the food
chain" (to use the common expression), it has fewer natural
predators. The reason for this is that at each successive trophic
level, there are simply fewer organisms; this, in turn, is due to the
fact that the energy available to each level is progressively
smaller, and the organisms themselves progressively
larger. This, in turn, stems from one of the most intriguing,
maddening concepts in the entire universe: the second law of
thermodynamics, which we discuss shortly.
Because of the diminishing number of organisms at each trophic
level, the food web often is depicted as a pyramid, a concept we
explore further later in this essay. The number of organisms
begins to increase again at the next trophic level beyond
secondary or tertiary consumers, that of decomposers. Large
omnivores and carnivores may not be prey for other creatures in
life, but everything dies eventually, and anything that has ever
lived is food for detritivores, or organisms that feed on waste
matter.

DETRITIVORES AND DECOMPOSERS.

Detritivores, which range in size and complexity from maggots to
vultures, may not be the most appealing creatures on Earth, but
without them life itself would suffer. By consuming the remains of
formerly living things, they break organic material down into
inorganic substances. In other words, their internal systems
chemically process compounds containing the element carbon in
characteristic structures. They then release that carbon into the

atmosphere and soil in such a way that what remains is inorganic

material that enriches the soil for the growth of new plant life.
But detritivores are not the last stop on the food web. The final
trophic level, before the cycle comes back around to plants,
contains the largest number of organisms in the entire food web
perhaps billions and billions, even in a space smaller than a coffee
cup. These are decomposers, or organisms that, as with
detritivores, obtain their energy from the chemical breakdown of
dead organisms. The decomposers, however, break down the
nutrients in decayed organic matter to a far greater extent than
do detritivores.
Typically, decomposers are microorganisms, including bacteria
and fungi, and they process materials in such a way that complex
compounds undergo the chemical reaction of decomposition.
Through decomposition, compounds are broken down into simpler
forms, or even into their constituent elements, which provide the
environment with nutrients necessary to the growth of more plant
life.

CATEGORIZING THE TROPHIC LEVELS.

The organisms in the food web can be viewed in three groups:
producers (plants), consumers (primary-and secondaryconsuming animals, whether herbivores, carnivores, or
omnivores), and decomposers (that is, both detritivores and true
decomposers). Producers and consumers are part of a larger
structure known as the grazing food web, in which food is "on its
way up the food chain," as it were. Decomposers and detritivores
make up the decomposer food web, which brings food back
"down" to the soil.
Producers also are called autotrophs, from Greek roots meaning
"self-feeders," because they are not dependent on other
organisms as a source of energy. Beyond the level of the primary
producers, all consumers are known as heterotrophs, or "otherfeeders." These creatures feed on other organisms to obtain their
energy and are classified according to the types of food they eat
herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, as we already have
discussed. Detritivores and decomposers also are considered
heterotrophs.

Organisms and Energy

Rather than depending on other organisms for energy, autotrophs
obtain energy from the Sun and carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. From these components, they build the large organic
molecules that they need to survive. Green plants do this through
the process of photosynthesis, a chemical reaction that can be
represented as follows:
solar energy + carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) + water (H 2 O)
glucose (sugar: C 6 H 12 O 6 ) + oxygen (O 2 )
Actually, in order to produce what chemists call a balanced
equation, it would be necessary to show this equation as a
reaction between the energy and six molecules each of carbon
dioxide and water, which would produce a glucose molecule and
six oxygen molecules. In any case, what we have described here
is an amazing thing and one of the great wonders of nature.
Sunlight aids plants in converting carbon dioxide, which they
receive from the respiration of animals, along with water (which
also may come from animal respiration, though this is not
necessarily the case), into a sugar molecule for the plant's
sustenance. Furthermore, oxygen, essential to the life of virtually
all animals, also is producedyet from the standpoint of the
plant, it is simply a waste by-product!

THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS.

The productivity of plants, which is measured in terms
of biomass (the combined mass of all organisms at a particular
trophic level in a food web), determines the amount of "fixed," or
usable, energy available to other trophic levels on the food web.
The amount of energy available always will be less for each
successive trophic level, through the point where consumers end
and decomposers beginthat is, through the level of the
secondary or perhaps tertiary consumer.
If there is any scientific equivalent of the curse in the Garden of
Eden (the punishment for the sins of Adam and Eve, according to

Judeo-Christian belief), it is the second law of thermodynamics.

Just as the expulsion from Paradise in the biblical story ensured
that life would be much more difficult for humans than it would
have been in Eden, so the second law thwarts all ambitions
toward transcending the limits of physical reality.
The first law of thermodynamics states that it is impossible to
obtain more energy from a system than is put into it. Thus, for
instance, a car will go only as far as is allowed by the amount of
energy that is pumped into its tank. The first law, discovered in
the mid-nineteenth century, effectively ruled out any hopes of a
perpetual-motion machine, but the second law, derived a few
decades later, delivered even worse news.
Though it can be stated in a number of ways, the second law
essentially means that it is impossible to extract as much energy
from a system as one puts into it. Thus, in the case of an
automobile, most of the energy contained in the gas does not go
toward moving the car; rather, it is dissipated in the form of heat
and sound, as a natural by-product of operating the engine. Even
without running an air conditioner or other energy-consuming
device, only about 30% of the energy from the gas goes to
turning the wheels.

THE ECOLOGICAL PYRAMID.

What this means for the food web is that there is bound to be a
loss of energy in the transfer from one trophic level to another.
Organisms never manage to retrieve 100% of the energy from the
materials they eat; in fact, the figure is more like 10%. A rabbit
that eats a carrot gets only about 10% of the energy in it, and
an owl that eats the rabbit gets only about 10% of the energy
from the rabbit, or 1% of the energy in the carrot. Because of
these diminishing returns, there are always fewer organisms at
each successive trophic level on the grazing food web. This fact is
expressed in a model known as the ecological pyramid, or energy
pyramid, which shows that as the amount of total energy
decreases with each trophic level, so does the biomass. As a
result, it may take 1,000 carrots to support 100 rabbits, 10 owls,
and one hawk.

The picture changes as the shift is made from the grazing web to
the decomposer web. Detritivores and decomposers are
extraordinarily efficient feeders, reworking detritus over and over
and extracting more fixed energy as they do. Eventually, they
break the waste down into simple inorganic chemicals, which, as
we have noted, then may be reused by the primary producers.
The number of organisms in the decomposing food web dwarfs
that of all others combined, though decomposers themselves are
very small, and their combined population takes up very little
physical space.