How might an omnivore be a link to both the beginning of a food web and the end?

Answer 1

== == Since it is a "WEB" there is no beginning or end as you say. However there are interesting things to behold if you look at the food web from the perspective of energy flow and how different types of organisms "link or knot" together in the flow of energy through the web. Lets look at it from the perspective of the omnivore: We can entirely identify with Homo sapiens, or man. Man as an omnivore may eat plants or algae (sea weed, spirulina) which use the energy from the sun to fix carbon into energy molecules like sugar. Plants as primary producers of biologically available energy could be considered to be the "beginning" of the web. Have a salad and you have tied yourself (an omnivore hopefully) to this part of the web. This is the Herbivore in us. Being omnivorous humans can eat insects (which many cultures do) or cows, which both feed on plants and can be considered the next link in the flow of energy. We could continue eating our way through the food energy web to link to the "end" when we feast on shark or bear (also an omnivore) or lion or crocodile or any animal that eats other animals. This is the carnivore and predator in us. However this "end" may not be the end as our feces (poop) is further fed upon by bacteria or fungi (decomposer) extracting the very last amounts of bio-available energy from the biomass and returning some minerals and other nutrients to the soil, which the plants then use. This could also be considered the "beginning" of the web. The food web is a complex system that has no beginning or end and has many loops, twists, knots and folds with no edges. Picture a ball net like the ones soccer balls are kept in, but empty and folded and wadded into a pile. You can think of omnivores as the cross links between various places on the web connecting a myriad of organisms. The term food chain is antiquated and its use indicates ignorance of the complexity of life. The answer seems pretty obvious if you have adequately expressed your question. An omnivore basically eats everything. Therefore its link to the beginning would be when it eats something lower than itself on the food chain. Its link to the end would be if it were eaten by another creature. Once the predator ate and digested it, your omnivore would become fertilizer which would nourish the plants that other creatures at the lower end of the food chain feed on - maybe another omnivore. And if predators didn't pick your omnivore's carcass clean, the remaining soft tissue would rot and decay...ending up as fertilizer. I know your question used the term 'food web' and in my answer I used 'food chain' but I think you should be able to figure out how my answer translates to fit your question. It works pretty much the same way.

Answer 2

An omnivore is, basically an animal that feeds primarily on both meat and plants.