food chain

food chain

Food chain is a sequence of bodies interconnected by feeding relationships. It is the way of expressing the power relationships between organisms in an ecosystem, including producers, consumers (herbivores and their predators, carnivores) and decomposers.

Throughout the food chain there is a transfer of energy and nutrients, always in the direction of producers to consumers. The transfer of nutrients closes with the return of nutrients to the producers, made possible by decomposers that transform the organic matter of dead bodies and excrement into simpler compounds, a nutrient transfer cycle. Energy, on the other hand, is used by all beings, where they fall into the food chain to support its functions, decreasing along the food chain (is lost as heat), not being reusable. The energy thus has an acyclic path necessarily dependent on energy from the sun. This process is known by ecologists as energy flow.

The position that each occupies in the food chain is a hierarchical level that ranks among producers (such as plants and algae), consumers (like animals) and decomposers (fungi and bacteria)

Because often each organism feeds more than one type of animals or plants, food relations (also known as trophic relationships) become more complex, leading to networks or food webs in which the different food chains interrelate .