Food Chain

{
  "id": "MLC-T-ENV-011442",
  "term": "Food Chain",
  "field": "Environment",
  "definition": "1. A specific nutrient and energy pathway in ecosystems proceeding from producer to consumer.\n\n2. The relationship between who eats whom among plants and animals.\n\n3. A sequence of organisms, each of which uses the next, lower member of the sequence as a food source.\n\n4. A feeding sequence, such as seed-to-songbird-to-raptor, used to describe the flow of energy and materials in an ecosystem (adapted from Ehrlich and Roughgarden 1987:620).\n\n5. The transfer of energy from the source in plants through a series of organisms with repeated eating and being eaten. At each transfer, a large proportion of the potential energy is lost as heat. The shorter the food chain (or the nearest the organism is from the beginning of the food chain), the greater the available energy which can be converted in biomass.\n\n6. A food chain is formed as one organism eats another.",
  "subject": "Ecosystems",
  "references": [
    "Nearshore Terrestrial Ecosystems Glossary",
    "Estuaries Glossary; Exploring Estuaries Glossary",
    "Terms of Environment",
    "USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Glossary of Avian Terms For Use in Avian Conservation Biology",
    "NOAA Fisheries Glossary",
    "Chesapeake Bay Glossary"
  ],
  "url": "https://mlchart.com/terminology/environment/food-chain/"
}