Food chains

A food chainfood chain: A sequence (usually shown as a diagram) of feeding relationships between organisms, showing who eats what and the movement of energy through trophic levels. shows what eats what in a particular habitat. For example, grass seed is eaten by a vole, which is eaten by a barn owl. The arrows between each item in the chain always point in the direction of energy flow - in other words, from the food to the feeder.

Food chain

The Sun is the ultimate source of energy for most communities of living things. Green plants absorb some of the Sun’s light energy to make their own food by photosynthesis [photosynthesis: The chemical change that occurs in the leaves of green plants. It uses light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose. Oxygen is produced as a by-product of photosynthesis. ]. The other organisms in a food chain are consumers, because they all get their energy and biomass by consuming - eating - other organisms.

It helps if you can recall the meaning of some common words used with food chains.

Common words used with food chains and their meaning