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8. CONCEPTS OF TROPHIC STRUCTURE, FOOD CHAIN AND FOOD WEB.

Food Chain and Food Web:

The term food chain signifies the transfer of energy and matter through a series of organisms
(autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and decomposers) with repeated eating and being
eaten. At each transfer a large proportion, 80% to 90% of the potential energy is lost as heat. Therefore,
the number of steps or “links” in a sequence is limited, usually to four or five. The shorter the food chain
or nearer the organism to the beginning of the chain the greater is the available energy.

A single food chain should have at least three links to the complete:

plant herbivore carnivore

Very often, however, a small carnivore, or omnivore may be preyed on by a large carnivore, and so on
until four or five links are involved. Rarely food chains are longer than five links.

An example of a three–link chain occurring on the North American Great Plains is grass  pronghorn 
coyote.

A four-link chain common to deciduous forest communities might include

tree foliage leaf hopper vireo hawk.

A four-link food chain in an Indian pasture is

Cynodon dactylom (a grass species/ plant)  elanoplus differentialis (grasshopper / herbivore) 

Bufomelanostictus (toad/carnivore 1)  Zamenis mucosus (rat snake/ carnivore 2)

A five –link chain would have to involve a number of small species, as

bacteria protozoan rotifer  small fish  large fish.

A food chain observed in an Indians river shows a five –link chain as follows:

Scenedesmus boligues  Brachionus falcatus  Amblypharyngodon sp.  Wallago attu 

(Phytoplankton) (zooplankton) (a small fish) (a large fish)

Homo sapiens
(man)

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These are examples of grazing food chain, which, starting from a green plant base, goes to grazing
herbivores (i.e. organisms) eating living plants and on to carnivores (i.e. animal eaters).

The second type of food chain is the detritus food chain, which goes from dead organic matter into
microorganisms and then to detritus –feeding organisms (detritivores) and their predators; for instance,

detritus snail  shrew owl.

In a food chain a strict predator need not necessarily be the last link, it could be an omnivore:
flowers bees bear.

Food chains occur in all kinds of habitats and communities, even with the microorganisms of the soil:
detritus  nematodes mites  pseudoscorpion.

Simple food chains rarely occur in nature because few organisms eat just one kind of organism. More
typically, the flow of energy and materials through an ecosystem takes place in accordance with a range
of food choices for each organism involved. In an ecosystem of average complexity, numerous
alternative pathways are possible. A hawk eating a rabbit is a different pathway than a hawk eating a
snake. A food web is a more realistic model of the flow of energy and materials through an ecosystem. A
food web is a representation of the interlocking food chains that connect all organisms in an ecosystem.
A food web helps usvisualize feeding relationships that indicate how a community is organized.

Diagram of food web

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A Food Web in Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystem

Food chain studies help in understanding the feeding relationships and interaction between organisms
in any ecosystem. Understanding this aspect of ecosystem function is important for efficient
management of biological resources. They also help us comprehend the energy flow mechanism and
matter circulation in ecosystems and understand the movement of toxic substances in the environment,
and the problem of biological magnification, a matter of considerable significance for ecological
communities and for public health. Food webs are useful descriptions of the feeding relationships of the
organisms in a community, but unlike ecological pyramids or trophic pyramids they are non-
quantitative.

Trophic Level

An organism’s position in a food chain determined by its feeding relationships is called trophic level. An
organism is assigned a trophic level based on the number of energy transfer steps to that level.
Producers (organisms that photosynthesize) form the first trophic level, primary consumers (herbivores)
the second trophic level, secondary consumers (carnivores) the third trophic level, and so on. At every
step in a food chain are decomposers in the carcasses and body wastes of all members of food chain.

Ecological Pyramids

An important feature of energy flow is that most of the energy going from one trophic level to the next
in a food chain or food web dissipates into the environment as a result of the second law of
thermodynamics. Ecological pyramids often graphically represent the relative energy values of each
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trophic level. There are three main types of pyramids – a pyramid of numbers, a pyramid of biomass,
and a pyramid of energy.

A pyramid of numbers shows the number of organisms at each trophic level in a given ecosystem. In
most pyramids of numbers, the organisms at the base of the food chain are the most abundant, and
fewer organisms occupy each successive trophic level. In the Antarctic food web, the number of algae is
far greater than the number of krill that feed on the algae; likewise the number of krills is greater than
the number of baleen whales, squid, and fishes that feed on krill.

The concept of ecological pyramid was developed by Charles Elton (1927) who observed that the
animals at the base of a food chain are relatively abundant while those at the end are relatively few in
number and there is a progressive decrease in between two extremes.

3rd -level Carnivores

2nd -level Carnivores

1st-level Carnivores

Herbivores

numbers

In a typical pyramid of number producers have been omitted following Elton (1927)

Inverted pyramids of numbers, in which higher trophic levels have more organisms than lower trophic
levels, are often observed among decomposers, parasites, tree dwelling herbivorus insects, and similar
organisms. One tree may provide food for thousands of leaf eating insects. Pyramids of numbers are of
limited usefulness because they do not indicate the biomass of the organisms at each level and do not
indicate the amount of energy transferred from one level to another.

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TC
C P = producers
SC Hyperparasite PC = primary consumers
SC = secondary consumers
PC Parasite TC = tertiary consumers

P P

Inverted Pyramid of Numbers

7 2nd-level Carnivores

1 x 105 1st- level Carnivores

1.3 x 106 Herbivores

30 Producers

Numbers
(Wytham Oakwood, Oxford)

Inverted Pyramid of Numbers

Pyramids of Biomass

A pyramid of biomass illustrates the total biomass at each successive trophic level. Biomass is a
quantitative estimate of the total mass, or amount, of living material; it indicates the amount of fixed
energy at a particular time. Biomass units of measure vary: Biomass is represented as total volume, as
dry weight, or as living weight. Typically, pyramids of biomass illustrate a progressive reduction of
biomass in succeeding trophic levels. A hypothetical example : 10,000 kg of grass may support 1000 kg
of grasshoppers, which in turn may support 100 kg of toads and 10 kgs of snakes. It is apparent that
although carnivores do not eat vegetation, a great deal of vegetation is required to support them.

If a smaller weight of producers supports a larger weight of consumers, inverted biomasses pyramid
results. This situation is possible because of a differential rate of production at different trophic levels.
The rate of production is higher and faster at the producer trophic level in some ecosystems than at the

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consumer trophic levels. In the oceans a given mass of phytoplankton at certain times in the year
supports a larger mass of zooplankton.

TC TC
P = producers
SC PC = primary consumers
SC
SC = secondary
PC PC consumers
TC = tertiary consumers
P P

UPRIGHT INVERTED

3rd -level Carnivores

2nd-level Carnivores Inverted pyramid of biomass of

1st- level Carnivores zooplankton feeding on
phytoplankton
Zooplankton

Phytoplankton

Biomass

PYRAMIDS OF BIOMASS

The pyramids of numbers and of biomass have their limitations because they provide information only
on the quantity of organic material available at a particular time not on the productivity and turnover
time.

Pyramids of Energy

A pyramid of energy illustrates the energy content, often expressed as kilocalories per square meter per
year, of the biomass of each trophic level. These pyramids always have large energy bases and get
progressively smaller through succeeding trophic levels. Energy pyramids show that most energy
dissipates into the environment when going from one trophic level to the next. Less energy reaches
each successive trophic level from the level beneath it because organisms at the lower level use some
energy to perform work and some energy is lost. According to the second law of thermodynamics no
biological process is ever 100% efficient. Energy pyramids explain why there are so few trophic levels.
Food webs are short because of large reduction in energy content at each trophic level.

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TC
P = producers
SC PC = primary consumers
SC = secondary
PC consumers
TC = tertiary consumers
P

UPRIGHT

3.9 X 102 2nd-level Carnivores Pyramid of energy based on oak trees, at

Wytham Wood, Oxford. Energy flows are
1.0 x 105 1st- level Carnivores given in Kcal/ ha/yr. The production of the
first-level carnivores appears to exceed the
9.7 x 104 Herbivores production of herbivores because of the
difficulties in measuring herbivore
1.2 X 107 Producers production.

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 Pollutants move through the various trophic levels in an ecosystem.

 Non-degradable pollutants (persistent pollutants), which cannot be broken down by detrivores, not only move
through the various trophic levels but also remain in that tropic level for a very long duration.

Movement of these pollutants involves two main processes:

1. Bioaccumulation
2. Biomagnification

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Credits

Bioaccumulation

 Bioaccumulation is the gradual accumulation of pollutants, chemicals (chronic poisoning) or other substances in
an organism.
 Bioaccumulation occurs when the rate of loss of the substance from the body of the organism through catabolism
(breakdown of complex molecules in living organisms), or excretion is lower than the rate of accumulation of the
substance.
 As persistent organic pollutants like DDT are long-lasting, the risk of bioaccumulation is high even if the
environmental levels of the pollutant are not high.

Biomagnification

Credits

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 Biomagnification refers to progressive bioaccumulation (increase in concentration) at each tropical level with

the passage of time. The increase can occur as a result of

 Persistence – where the substance cannot be broken down by environmental processes
 Food chain energetics– where the substance's concentration increases progressively as it moves up a food
chain
 Low or non-existent rate of internal degradation or excretion of the substance – mainly due to water-
insolubility

 In order for biomagnification to occur, the pollutant must have a long biological half-life (long-lived), must not be
soluble in water but must be soluble in fats. E.g. DDT.
 If the pollutant is soluble in water, it will be excreted by the organism.
 Pollutants that dissolve in fats are retained for a long time. Hence it is traditional to measure the amount of pollutants
in fatty tissues of organisms such as fish.
 In mammals, milk produced by females is tested for pollutants since the milk has a lot of fat in.

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