How is the food web different from a food chain?

Answer 1

FOOD CHAIN: sereis of steps in an ecosystem in which organisms transfer energy by eating and being eaten.

FOOD WEB: network of complex interactions formed by the feeding relationships among the various organisms in an ecosystem.

Answer 2

Food Chain

Every living thing on earth needs food to give energy to move and grow. What the food chain does is that it shows us how each living thing gets its food. The food chain also shows who is eating who. The food chain no matter how big it is will always start with a plant which is also called a producer. Next on the list would be a living thing which eats the plant which would be called a consumer. Lastly on the food chain would be an animal that eats the creature that ate the grass which would be called predator, in which case is always at the top of the food chain. Each thing depends on one another to survive and to get their energy. Most times humans are the predators. We would always be found on the top of the food chain. There is one really important thing for the food chain to exist, it's the sun we don't put the sun on our food chain but that doesn't mean it doesn't do a big job. If there was no sun there would be no plants, because plants depend on the sun to make their own food which is a process called photosynthesis. If there were no plants there would be no animals, because animals depend on plants to survive. If there were no animals there would be no humans or predators, since all humans depend on animals and plants to live. So basically our whole world wouldn't exist. An example of a food chain is grass, grasshopper, toad and hawk. The grasshopper eats the grass, the toad eats the grasshopper and the hawk eats the toad. That is how the food chain works. The difference between a food chain and a food web is that a food web has many food chains. A food chain only follows just one path as animals find food.

e.g.: A hawk eats a snake, which has eaten a frog, which has eaten a grasshopper, which has eaten grass. A food web shows the many different paths plants and animals are connected.

e.g.: A hawk might also eat a mouse, a squirrel, a frog or some other animal. The snake may eat a beetle, a caterpillar, or some other animal. And so on for all the other animals in the food chain. A food web is several food chains connected together. Food Web

Animals eat many types of food. They don't just form food chains. They form food webs. Food webs show the many types of food that animals eat. Which will form the shape of a pyramid? (There are more producers, or plants, than consumers, or animals!) A drop in one area of the food web affects the other areas of the food web! A food web is a diagram that also shows the feeding relationships between the plants and animals in a certain area. That is who eats whom but it is more complicated. In food webs plants are called producers because they are able to use light energy from the Sun to produce food (sugar) from carbon dioxide and water. Animals are called consumers because they cannot make their own food so they must eat plants and/or other animals. There are three types of consumers:

Herbivores - Animals that eat plants

Carnivores - Animals that eat other animals

Omnivores - Animals that eat both animals and plants - like humans. Food webs also show decomposer (bacteria and fungi) which feed on Left over of an animal release nutrients back into the soil and food web.

Answer 3

There isn't a big difference between the food chain and food web. This is just a different way of drawing out the same concept.