What relationship exists between trophic levels and a food chain?
Answers
Food chains and trophic levels both look at what an organism does for energy. As you move up a food chain, you are typically moving into a higher tropic level, and all food chains have essentially the same tropic levels. At the bottom of the food chain are plants. In trophic level terms, plants are producers because they make their own energy. The next level up is consumers, which consume other organisms for energy. There are several different levels of consumers. Primary consumers eat plants, secondary consumers eat primary consumers, and tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers. Secondary and tertiary consumers are also known as predators, and they are higher on the food chain. Another trophic level is made up of decomposers, which break down organic material. These would be considered low on the food chain.