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There are two major food chains: The primary food chain is the energy coming from autotrophs and passed on to the consumers; and the second major food chain is when carnivores eat the herbivores or decomposers that consume the autotrophic energy. [16] Consumers are broken down into primary consumers, secondary consumers and tertiary consumers.
That is, the consumer trophic level is one plus the weighted average of how much different trophic levels contribute to its food. In the case of marine ecosystems, the trophic level of most fish and other marine consumers takes a value between 2.0 and 5.0.
Tertiary consumers, which are sometimes also known as apex predators, are hypercarnivorous or omnivorous animals usually at the top of food chains, capable of feeding on both secondary consumers and primary consumers. Tertiary consumers are usually the largest, strongest and most aggressive animal in the local environment. Both secondary and ...
In a temperate grassland, grasses and other plants are the primary producers at the bottom of the pyramid. Then come the primary consumers, such as grasshoppers, voles and bison, followed by the secondary consumers, shrews, hawks and small cats. Finally the tertiary consumers, large cats and wolves.
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...
Amazon River rain forest in Peru. Tropical rainforests are hot and wet. Mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 °C (64 °F) during all months of the year. [4] Average annual rainfall is no less than 1,680 mm (66 in) and can exceed 10 m (390 in) although it typically lies between 1,750 mm (69 in) and 3,000 mm (120 in). [5]
Biomes are often defined by their structure: at a general level, for example, tropical forests, temperate grasslands, and arctic tundra. [4]: 14 There can be any degree of subcategories among ecosystem types that comprise a biome, e.g., needle-leafed boreal forests or wet tropical forests.
Consumer–resource interactions are the core motif of ecological food chains or food webs, [1] and are an umbrella term for a variety of more specialized types of biological species interactions including prey-predator (see predation), host-parasite (see parasitism), plant-herbivore and victim-exploiter systems.