Question

What do you understand by the term food chain?

Answer 1

The food is basically a hierarchy of organisms in the trophic level. It starts with the producers (plants) and ends with decomposers.

Complete answer:
Food chain is a chain of a linear sequence of organisms that starts from the producer organisms and ends with decomposer species. It involves the transfer of energy from one trophic level to the next. The food chain always starts with producers (plants). Plants make food with the help of sunlight, therefore, they are known to be producers. Plants are eaten by herbivores which include goat, deer, cow, horses, etc. They are regarded as the primary consumers. The primary consumers are then eaten by the secondary consumers that include lions, tigers, bears, etc. When all these organisms die, they are then eaten by the decomposers. The decomposers are organisms that sit on the top of the food chain. Example of a food chain:
Grass (Producer) - Goat (Primary Consumer) - Man (Secondary consumer).

Additional information: At each trophic level, only 10% of the energy is transferred, the remaining 90% is lost in the form of heat into the environment. This is known as the 10% law.

Note: A food web is a graphical model depicting the many food chains linked together to show the feeding relationships of organisms in an ecosystem. It differs from a food chain in a way that the latter is a linear system showing a succession of organisms whereby each species is eaten in turn by another species.