Food chains are essential for a sustainable ecosystem. A food chain is one link in a food web which is a more intricate system of the prey and predator relationships of a habitat. First, all food chains start with the Sun which gives us energy. It then moves to the producer, which is a plant or a tree that gets direct energy from the Sun. After that, there is a primary consumer, in a grassland habitat, a grasshopper would be an example of this. They get direct energy from the producer. Eventually, there is a secondary consumer, in this case, a mouse would be an example of this because the mouse would get direct energy from the grasshopper. After this, there are tertiary consumers such as a snake eating the mouse. Finally, there are decomposers which could be fungi or worms. Decomposers take the remains of the dead animals and decompose them into new nutrients for the soil.
In a food chain, arrows are drawn so that it shows where the energy is going. So from a grasshopper to a mouse, the arrow would be pointing towards the mouse because the energy is going to the mouse. There are food chains in every single ecosystem or habitat, whether in the water, underground, or in the sky. Even humans are part of the food chain, but an organism’s role is always relative. For example, a snake could be a tertiary consumer such as in the previous example, or a snake could be a secondary consumer and a hawk could be a tertiary consumer. What’s important to note is that the Sun will always be the source of energy, and the producer will always be a sort of plant.
What does the food chain always start with?
Which way do the arrows point in a food chain?
Name an example of a food chain with a producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, and tertiary consumer.
The Sun
The arrows point in the direction where the energy is directed
N/A