Food Web

{
  "id": "MLC-T-ENV-011478",
  "term": "Food Web",
  "field": "Environment",
  "definition": "1. Complex intermeshing of individual food chains in an ecosystem.\n\n2. The feeding relationships by which energy and nutrients are transferred from one species to another.\n\n3. System of interlocking and interdependent food chains, in which each organism supplies energy to another life form.\n\n4. \"Feeding or tropic relationships of the species populations in an ecosystem. A highly idealized characterization of the food chain consisting of producers (plants)/herbivores/lower carnivores/upper carnivores/top carnivores is seldom realized. The web concept of a complex of many changing feeding relationships is a more realistic concept both in the wild and in controlled ecologies.\" - Adey, 1995\n\n5. An abstract representation of the various paths of energy and material flow through populations in the community (Ricklefs 1979:870).",
  "subject": "Ecosystems",
  "references": [
    "Nearshore Terrestrial Ecosystems Glossary",
    "Terms of Environment",
    "Chesapeake Bay Glossary",
    "USGS Toxic Substances Hydrology Program Definitions",
    "USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Glossary of Avian Terms For Use in Avian Conservation Biology"
  ],
  "url": "https://mlchart.com/terminology/environment/food-web/"
}