Question

Why is the food web more stable than the food chain? What lessons does it give to us?

Answer 1

All life needs energy and living organisms either produce energy themselves such as the plants or obtain it from the food they consume. The different biological activities such as reproduction, growth, cell division, and metabolism are all processes that require energy. A food web is described as an interconnecting sequence that represents in detail the overall food relationships between organisms in a particular environment. It can be described as a ‘who-eats-whom’ diagram.

Complete answer:
A food web or food chain, both include producers, consumers, and decomposers. The food web or food pyramid is a network of food chains. In this network, the organisms are interconnected with each other at various trophic levels for the purpose of forming several feeding connections amongst members of a biotic community. A food web defines the complex feeding relationships for a particular ecosystem.
The food chain is a representation of a linear sequence of organisms. Through the food chain, food and its contained energy pass from one organism to another. In a food chain, a member presents in the earlier sequence becomes the food of the member which is present in the later sequence. An organized food chain is always at a risk to be damaged with a major effect on the ecosystem as well. If in a food chain the population of secondary consumers is increased then the population of its prey or primary consumers will decrease rapidly which causes a insufficiency of food to secondary consumers which lead them toward starvation, and hence death.
In a food web, there is a huge chance for each predator to choose different types of prey for their food. If the population of one type of prey will be reduced, it will not affect the other predators because they can eat some other animals as their food. On the other side, the population of preferred prey will be restored.
The theory of the food web gives us the lesson not to depend on a single source which also helps us in case of adversity.

Note: The food web is a network of food chains in an ecosystem where all organisms are interconnected to each other. Each organism is eaten by the other organism and then those organisms are eaten by several other organisms, these series of organisms where one is dependent for food on another is called the food web. The flow of energy in a food web is always unidirectional. In a food web, the supplies of food never end. Therefore, it is more stable than the food chain.