Talk:Food web

Food webs are different fom a food chain ----

I'm not sure itfn is an improvement to simply remove the food chain example, particularly since the article expands on that simplistic concept to describe food webs. Although perhaps not realistic in terms of what happens in nature, food chains are still used extensively to show relationships of animals and plants. - Marshman 19:05, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

food chain members

As a secondary school student, i found it hard to research on food chain members, such as the producer, consumer, decomposers and scavenger. I found the topic 'food chains' played little help in my research. Please add this information, so future researchers such as myself can make references to this page. Thank you.

Food cycles

In the article, you read this about food chains:

They usually start with a primary producer and end with a top predator.

This is a common mistake today.

Even the primary producer must get carbon and nitrogen somewhere, and even the top predator contributes to the cycle start by excrements and by own body when dies...

The plancton probably reuses the biological wastes, flushed by water from continents, and/or airy carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Carbon dioxide is produced by all upper parts of the cycle, making a short-path to the beginning... The same is for plants and animal excrements, that naturally get rotten and re-supply the food chain, through ground bacteries, to new plants...

The plants use nitrogen/carbon output from bacteries, airy carbon dioxide, water (humidity), solar energy and produces biomass (celulose, sacharides, proteines...) Most rest of solar energy, that is not converted this way to biomass, is re-radiated as a heat...

Then it continues into upper levels, as described in the article, but all upper levels make some feedback into the starting levels (excrements, bodies, breath...).

We should call it the Food cycles instead .

The "matter" is (probably?) not created anywhere on the earth, all matter circulates...

May 05 2006, Semi

If food chain refers to the depiction of the community, rather than the reality of the community, then it is certainly correct to say that most food chains begin with producers and end with top predators. That is how they are drawn. You are certainly correct that this is an inaccurate depiction of reality, which is why many (most?) ecologists have shifted to thinking in terms of food webs. It may nonetheless be useful to describe food chains as they are generally depicted, and then to point out the shortcomings. Justinleif 18:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Food Chain

Does any person know when the term 'food chain' begain to originate? Who first began to use the term 'food chain' and when did the term 'food chain' become widely recognised?

Who Cares? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.110.82.251 (talk) 20:20, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

It's important to document the history of various terminology. It helps to understand the development of the subject, and it can also be helpful in tracing different lines of thought as they develop in the literature. Cazort (talk) 00:39, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Returned Article to Previous State

It appears that about 2 weeks ago something happened and the article is now much lower on content. I have dug the old version out of the archives and replaced it. Much of the content is unchanged but it is added to. Cimex 16:37, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Check out a paper by Raymond L. Lindeman (can be found on Wiki) He wrote a paper called 'A trophic dynamic aspect of ecology', he looked at trophic levels and energy flows. He uses a food web diagram in this paper, not sure if it the first one used but will be good start to look at this. He used the 'ecosystem' concept coined by Tansley 1935 - Use and abuse of vegetational concepts and terms. Another good place to look is a book called "Fundamentals of ecology', maybe helpful. Either way these two papers should probably be read if you haven't just for their importance in the field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.160.125.199 (talk) 05:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Anecdotes should be deleted

Neither of the anecdotes included in this article have anything to do with food webs. I would vote to delete both of them. Justinleif 01:53, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I vote to delete them both too. The anecdotes seem to do nothing to supplement the article information and only confuse the reader as to what a "food chain" actually is. Cariosus 20:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I haven't heard any opposition to deleting them, so I went ahead and did so. Justinleif 18:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Platypus?

I don't understand what the picture of the coin with a platypus has to do with food chains. Justinleif 21:59, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Example of food web

I want example of "FOOD WEB" and not "FOOD CHAIN". Please help . Anishgirdhar 14:19, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

           Thank you

Merge With Trophic Dynamics

Trophic dynamics, trophic levels, food webs, and food chains all seem to me to go together. There is a fair amount of overlap in these two pages. I realize that trophic dynamics is the study of food webs, but you can't really explain one without explaining the other as you go. Jmeppley 01:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Although both share similar broad-topic ideas, the information in each are different. Bdodo1992 01:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that the pages should be merged because the trophic dynamics page is a complete mess. At present it is a jumble of vaguely related topics lumped together for no apparent reason. All of the topics covered on the trophic dynamics page are covered more thoroughly elsewhere. The food chain/web page needs a lot of work, but is at least coherent. I would vote to delete the trophic dynamic page and redirect trophic dynamics to the food chain page. Justinleif 00:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

no!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.148.205 (talk) 01:25, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

no, those are different topics, though they are related —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.251.180.104 (talk) 00:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the merge because both Trophic dynamics (levels) and food chain are significant stand-alone subjects.--Svetovid (talk) 00:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

If the merge is done, it's crucial that this page still be retrievable via the search term "trophic level." Kevin.cohen (talk) 17:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC) NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i agree with..... NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.154.230.126 (talk) 15:27, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

NO two big letters mean a lot. the Food chain is RELATED but not part of trophic levels.

No - Skysmith (talk) 08:26, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Propose Rename/Re-redirect

Although food web, trophic network, and food chain are effectively synonyms, they conjure up different images. The concept of "web", even though it is not used quite as widely as food chain in educational literature, is more accurate at describing the actual structure of the ecosystem: the trophic relationships form a network, not a chain in the sense of a linear order. I propose renaming this page to food web, using this as the primary term, and having food chain redirect, in order to reflect the fact that food web is more accurate and descriptive terminology. Cazort (talk) 00:37, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the article should be called food web, because we can think of food chain as a sub-topic, even though the term is better known among the general public.--Svetovid (talk) 00:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

If this rename/merge/redirect is done, it's crucial that the article still be findable by searching on the term "trophic level." Kevin.cohen (talk) 17:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

JUST MERGE

YOU CAN JUST MAKE TOPIC LIKE THIS "FOOD CHAIN-TROPHIC DYNAMICS" AND DESCRIBE BOTH OF IT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.121.172.205 (talk) 15:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Food chain v. food web

In my mind, there is a significant difference between a food web and a chain. A chain seems to link the relationships of a given line of consumption, ie, grass eaten by rabbit, rabbit eaten by fox, fox eaten by human or something. A food web attempts to show a little bit more complexity in that it may introduce a few other elements - like a squirrel that eats grass, that can also be eaten by a fox, and a human that catches the rabbit for food, and perhaps other things such as the relationship between detrivores and the cycle, etc. I think this is worth adding into the article Gautam ^Discuss 01:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

This is the most abysmal discussion page I've ever seen for a merger suggestion.

I doubt it will matter but I agree with the merger suggestion. Trophic dynamics is a part of food webs - it describes the way that energy passes between levels/nodes in a food web. I don't believe there is sufficient information to warrant trophic dynamic having its own page - simply adding a section to the food web page to cover trophic dynamics, with an appropriate redirect to food webs for any search for trophics, should be sufficient. If at some point the trophic systems section of the food web article swells to the point where it warrants an independent page it can always be split off, but I don't believe that will happen because trophics is inextricably a part of food web studies. CastorQuinn (talk) 07:42, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

This really needs a thorough rewrite

It's repetitious and poorly written - I've improved it a bit, but it still needs a deal of work, and I haven't much spare time right now. Kay Dekker (talk) 21:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

A food chain is the flow of energy from one organism to the next and to the next and to the next. Organisms in a food chain are grouped into trophic levels,based on how many links they are removed from the primary producers. Trophic levels may contain either a single species or a group of species that are presumed to share both predators and prey. They usually start with a plant and end with a carnivore. The diagram at right is a food chain from a Swedish lake. It can be described as follows: osprey feed on northern pike that feed on perch that eat bleak that feed on freshwater shrimp. Although they are not shown in this diagram, the primary producers of this food chain are probably autotrophic phytoplankton. Phytoplankton and algae form the base of most freshwater food chains. It is often the case that biomass of each trophic level decreases from the base of the chain to the top. This is because energy is lost to the environment with each transfer. On average, only 10% of the organism's energy is passed on to its predator. The other 90% is used for the organism's life processes or it is lost as heat to the environment. Graphic representations of the biomass or productivity at each tropic level are called trophic pyramids. In this food chain for example, the biomass of osprey is smaller than the biomass of pike, which is smaller than the biomass of perch. Some producers, especially phytoplankton, are so productive and have such a high turnover rate that they can actually support a larger biomass of grazers. This is called an inverted pyramid, and can occur when consumers live longer and grow more slowly than the organisms they consume. In this food chain, the productivity of phytoplankton is much greater than that of the zooplankton consuming them. The biomass of the phytoplankton, however, may actually be less than that of the copepods. Directly linked to this are pyramids of numbers, which show that as the chain is travelled along, the number of consumers at each level drops very significantly, so that a single top consumer (e.g. a Polar Bear) will be supported by literally millions of separate producers (e.g. Phytoplankton).