What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?

A food chain is one path of energy, such as grass → grasshopper → frog → hawk. A food web links many chains together, because most animals eat more than one kind of food.

Why are there fewer top predators than producers?

Each step up loses most of its energy as heat, movement and waste. On average only about 10 % is passed on as new body, so a meadow can support far fewer hawks than grass plants. The 10 % figure is an approximation; real values range from about 5 to 20 %.

What is biomagnification?

When a pollutant is not broken down and is stored in fat, each predator ends up with more of it than the animals it eats. Top predators such as hawks get the highest dose.

What do decomposers do in a food web?

Fungi and worms break down dead bodies and waste, returning nutrients to the soil so that producers can use them again. Energy is not recycled in the same way: it leaves the web as heat.

What happens if a producer is removed from a food web?

No new energy enters the web, so the animals that eat it lose their food and decline, and then the predators that eat them decline too.

🧬 Biology · The science of living things

Food Web

Watch a fox catch a rabbit step by step in a left-to-right food web, remove a species to see the chain reaction, spill a pesticide and watch energy flow and populations change.

Left to right: who eats whom

Ready to explore

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Model time—

Species alive—

Grass left—

Meals eaten—