Food Web

       Food web is an Important ecological concept Basically, food web represents feeding relationships within a living community. It also implies the transfer of food energy from its source in plants through herbivores to carnivores Normally, food webs consists of a number of food chains meshed together. Each food chain is a descriptive diagram including a series of arrows, each pointing from one species to another, representing the flow of food energy from one feeding group of organisms to another. 

     There are two types of food chains namely the grazing food chain, beginning with autotrophs, and the detrital food chain, beginning with dead organic matter. In a grazing food chain, energy and nutrients move from plants to the herbivores consuming them, and to the carnivores or omnivores preying upon the herbivores in a detrital food chain, dead organic matter of plants and animals is broken down by de composers e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detrivores and then carnivores.

     Food web offers an important tool for investigating the ecological interactions that define energy flows and predator-prey relationship.  The above food web represents a typical forest food web showing Tiger as the apex predator and the changeable hawk eagle as the avian predator Most feed webs are complex and involve many species with both strong and weak interactions among them Many food webs will have several intricate and complex food chains each having producer at the base level and de composers at the end