The food chain is a set of links that show the cycle of groups of animals that feed on other groups of vicious beings in an ecosystem and the energy transfer that takes place. This occurs with animals that consume land, air and sea.
Organisms that are capable of capturing energy either from sunlight or from chemicals and converting it into a form that other organisms can use are called autotrophs.
Autotrophs are also known as primary producers and are a very important food source for other organisms. On land, the primary producers they are mostly plants like grass, plants or tree branches. In the ocean, 95% of primary production is carried out by microscopic phytoplankton. Phytoplankton contributes 50% of the oxygen in our atmosphere. Some phytoplankton are bacteria and some are protists. Two important types of phytoplankton are diatoms and dinoflagellates.
In the coastal regions of the ocean, algae, such as kelp, and plants, such as seagrass, are important primary producers.
For organisms that cannot make their own food, they must eat other organisms to meet their energy requirements. These organisms are called heterotrophs. Heterotrophs are also called consumers because they must consume other organisms for energy and nutrients.
Consumers who are part of the food chain obtain their energy in different ways:
On the earth’s surface there are herbivores that feed on plant material. In the ocean, an example of a herbivore would be a periwinkle grazing on some algae.
Food chains start with a primary producer. The energy is then transferred to a primary consumer, then secondary, tertiary and quaternary consumers successively.
The primary consumer is an organism that feeds on a primary producer, which may include a zooplankton or a snail in the ocean.
In reality, most ecosystems are more complicated than a simple chain of feeding interactions. Many species consume more than one type of species, creating a complex web of interactions known as a food web.
Examples of aquatic primary consumers
tiger or zebra snail
apple snail
sea cucumbers
black sea urchin
freshwater shrimp
Whale shark
Green turtle
surgeonfish
Salema
blue parrotfish
bench
marble fish
Cheetah fish
black puffer fish
Sleepyhead
silver sardine