Food Chains and food Webs

Food Chains and food Webs

Living things depend on each other for energy,like food chains and food web. In nearly all food chains, solar energy  is input into the system as light and heat, utilized by autotrophs in a process called photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is reduced by being combined with water, producing glucose. water splintting produces hydrogen, but is a nonspontaneous reaction requiring energy from the sun. Carbon dioxide and water, both stable, oxidized compounds, are low in energy, but glucose, a high-energy compound and good electron donor, is capable of storing the solar energy. This energy is expended for cellular processes, growth, and development. The plant sugars are polymerized for storage as long-chain carbonhydrates, including other sugars, starch, and cellulose.

 Food chains are overly simplistic as representatives of the relationships of living organisms in nature. Most consumers feed on multiple species and in turn, are fed upon by multiple other species.

For a snake, the prey might be a mouse, a lizard, or a frog, and the predator might be a bird of prey or a badger. The relations of detritivores and parasites are seldom adequately characterized in such chains as well.
A food web is a series of related food chains displaying the movement of energy and matter through an ecosystem. The food web is divided into two broad categories: the grazing web, beginning with autotrophs, and the detrital web, beginning with organic debris. There are many food chains contained in these food webs.
In a grazing web, energy and nutrients move from plants to the herbivores consuming them to the carnivores or omnivores preying upon the herbivores. In a detrital web, plant and animal matter is broken down by decomposers, e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detritivores and then carnivores.