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Biology vocabulary · Ecology and Ecosystems

Food chain

Meaning in biology, with examples

/ˈfuːd ˌtʃeɪn/nounCore term

In biology, food chain means: A simple sequence showing what eats what in an ecosystem. It starts with a producer such as a plant and passes energy from one consumer to the next.

In Turkish: besin zinciri

How it is used

A typical example: grass → grasshopper → frog → snake → hawk. The arrows show the direction of energy flow. Organisms are described as producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers and so on. Several connected food chains form a food web.

Example sentences

  1. Some pesticides become more concentrated at each step up the food chain.

  2. Phytoplankton are at the bottom of almost every marine food chain.

Common collocations

  • top of the food chain
  • bottom of the food chain
  • marine food chain
  • aquatic food chain
  • food webA network of connected food chains that shows all the feeding relationships in an ecosystem, since most organisms eat, and are eaten by, more than one species.
  • ecosystemA community of living things together with the non-living parts of their environment, such as water, soil and climate, all interacting as one system.
  • predatorAn animal that hunts, kills and eats other animals. The animal that it hunts is called its prey.
  • decomposerAn organism, mainly a bacterium or fungus, that breaks down dead plants, animals and waste, returning nutrients to the soil and the ecosystem.

More terms: Ecology and Ecosystems

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