Question

Is it possible to construct a food chain without a producer? State the reason to support your answer.

Answer 1

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● You cannot have a food chain until food has been produced. Plants are called producers because they use energy from the sun to make their own food through a process called photosynthesis.

● Plants are called producers because they use energy from the sun to make their own food through a process called photosynthesis.

Answer 2

Answer:

Is it possible to construct a food chain without a producer? State the reason to support your answer.

A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals. For example, a simple food chain links the trees and shrubs, the giraffes (that eat trees and shrubs), and the lions (that eat the giraffes). Each link in this chain is food for the next link. All food chains start with energy from the sun. This energy is captured by plants. Thus the living part of a food chain always starts with plant life and ends with an animal.

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 cannot make their own food so they must eat plants and/or other animals. They are called consumers. There are three groups of consumers. Animals that eat only plants are called herbivores (or primary consumers). Animals that eat other animals are called carnivores. Carnivores that eat herbivores are called secondary consumers, and carnivores that eat other carnivores are called tertiary consumers. Animals and people who eat both animals and plants are called omnivores. Then there are decomposers (bacteria, fungi, and even some worms), which feed on decaying matter. These decomposers speed up the decaying process that releases mineral salts back into the food chain for absorption by plants as nutrients.

In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another. When a herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy (that it gets from the plant food) becomes new body mass; the rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up by the herbivore to carry out its life processes (e.g., movement, digestion, reproduction). Therefore, when the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small amount of total energy (that it has received) to the carnivore. Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be “wasted” or “used up” by the carnivore. The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get enough energy to grow. Because of the large amount of energy that is lost at each link, the amount of energy that is transferred decreases each time. The further along the food chain you go, the less food (and hence energy) remains available.

Food chains can also be represented in different forms such as this pyramid