Above Ground Food Webs
In above ground food webs, energy moves from producers (plants) to primary consumers (herbivores) and then to secondary consumers (predators). The phrase, trophic level, refers to the different levels or steps in the energy pathway. In other words, the producers, consumers, and decomposers are the main trophic levels. This chain of energy transferring from one species to another can continue several more times, but eventually ends. At the end of the food chain, decomposers such as bacteria and fungi break down dead plant and animal material into simple nutrients.
Read more about this topic: Soil Food Web
Famous quotes containing the words ground, food and/or webs:
“Having interr’d her Infant-birth,
The watry ground that late did mourn,
Was strew’d with flow’rs for the return
Of the wish’d Bridegroom of the earth.”
—Edward Herbert (1583–1648)
“Civilization means food and literature all round. Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all. First-class proteins for the body, fourth-class love-stories for the spirit.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Sometimes outside beneath a bombers’ moon
You stood alone to watch the searchlights trace
Their careful webs against the boding sky,”
—Edgar Bowers (b. 1924)