NEET BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -A food chain describes how energy and nutrients move through an ecosystem. At the basic level there are plants that produce the energy, then it moves up to higher-level organisms like herbivores. After that when carnivores eat the herbivores, energy is transferred from one to the other.

Detailed explanation-2: -In a detrital food chain, dead organic matter of plants and animals is broken down by decomposers, e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detritivores and then carnivores. Food web offers an important tool for investigating the ecological interactions that define energy flows and predator-prey relationship (Cain et al.

Detailed explanation-3: -Food webs model matter and energy transfer A food web is a model of feeding relationships in an ecosystem. When an organism is eaten, the matter and energy stored in its tissues are transferred to the organism that eats it. The arrows in a food web represent this transfer.

Detailed explanation-4: -In a food chain, each organism occupies a different trophic level, defined by how many energy transfers separate it from the basic input of the chain. Food webs consist of many interconnected food chains and are more realistic representation of consumption relationships in ecosystems.

Detailed explanation-5: -The flow of energy is always unidirectional. The energy passes from primary producers to primary consumers. From the primary consumers, the energy is passed to secondary consumers and then to tertiary consumers.