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Biology vocabulary · Ecology and Ecosystems

Food web

Meaning in biology, with examples

/ˈfuːd ˌweb/nounCommon term

In biology, food web means: A 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.

In Turkish: besin ağı

How it is used

More realistic than a single food chain. Ecologists use food webs to predict what happens when one species is removed or added. Each feeding level in a web is called a trophic level.

Example sentences

  1. Removing sea otters from the food web led to an explosion in sea urchin numbers.

  2. Draw a food web for the pond using at least eight organisms.

Common collocations

  • complex food web
  • marine food web
  • trophic level
  • draw a food web
  • food chainA 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.
  • predatorAn animal that hunts, kills and eats other animals. The animal that it hunts is called its prey.
  • 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.
  • 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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