Why is a food web a more realistic representation of a community as compared to a food chain?
Answers
Because it shows the relation of organisms with each other in a habitat, rather than just a small segment of it like a food chain.
It is also still pretty easy to understand like a food chain.
Explanation:
It's more realistic due to the fact you can add more organisms into the mix, and show how they interact with each other in an ecosystem. Rather than just doing a small segment of about 3 or 4 animals in a basic food chain, you can have as many different animals as you want from an ecosystem in a food web, whom both can eat the same organism, be it a producer or less predator.
You can also begin to identify possible circumstances or effect of the removal or the decrease or increase of one or more species in the ecosystem.
For example, the producer on the diagram could be grass, and there are sheep and goats eating it, and mountain lions and wolves eating the sheep and goats. The Humans nearby hunt the mountain lions and kill off the mountain lions.
A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Another name for food web is consumer-resource system.