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The number of trophic links per consumer is a measure of food web connectance. Food chains are nested within the trophic links of food webs. Food chains are linear (noncyclic) feeding pathways that trace monophagous consumers from a base species up to the top consumer, which is usually a larger predatory carnivore. [8] [9] [10]
The primary consumer may be eaten by a secondary consumer, which in turn may be consumed by a tertiary consumer. The tertiary consumers may sometimes become prey to the top predators known as the quaternary consumers. For example, a food chain might start with a green plant as the producer, which is eaten by a snail, the primary consumer.
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.
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.
The male frog has certain hormone-dependent secondary sexual ... They are themselves eaten by secondary predators and are the primary terrestrial consumers of ...
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.
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.
In the food chain, heterotrophs are primary, secondary and tertiary consumers, but not producers. [3] [4] Living organisms that are heterotrophic include all animals and fungi, some bacteria and protists, [5] and many parasitic plants.