Question

What are trophic levels? Give an example of a food chain and state the different trophic levels in it.

Answer 1

Food chain: It is a series of organisms those are interrelated in their feeding habit.
In this smallest being fed upon by a larger one and which in turn feeds a still larger one etc.
Food chains follow just one path of energy as animals find food.

Complete answer:
The trophic level is defined as the level of an organism it occupies in a food web.
The trophic level of an organism is the number of levels it is from the start of the chain.
A food web or food chain begins at trophic level 1 which is regarded as primary producers such as plants and level 2 is of herbivores, carnivores at level 3 or higher and finally finishing with apex predators at level 4 or 5.
Trophic levels can be represented by numbers, beginning at level 1 with plants.
Further trophic levels are numbered subsequently according to how far the organism is along the food chain.
Level 1: It includes plants and algae that make their own food and are known as producers.
Level 2: It includes herbivores that eat plants and are called primary consumers.
Level 3: It includes carnivores that eat herbivores are called secondary consumers.
Level 4: It includes carnivores that eat other carnivores are called tertiary consumers.
Apex predators as we know have no predators and are at the top of their food web.
Example of food is:
Grass is the first trophic level known as producer which gets eaten up by the primary consumer such as goat and further the primary consumer gets eaten upon by the secondary consumer such as man.

Note: A food web is all of the food chains in an ecosystem.
In an ecosystem each and every organism occupies a particular trophic level or position in the food chain or web.
Producers are always at the bottom of the trophic pyramid because they can synthesized their own food.