How is a food chain different from a Food Web?
If you do a web search on “food chain” and “food web” you’ll get hits with diagrams and text describing the two. For starters, a food chain starts with a producer and goes in a straight line to one creature that eats the producer, and then second creature that eats the first, and so on with around four or five organisms total in it. There’s no branching off or anything–just a straight line of one creature eating the one below it. If you draw a line showing relationships between all the organisms involved it looks like a chain. A food web shows a more complex and I think realistic interrelationship of all the creatures in an ecosystem. For instance, there could be three animals (primary consumers) that eat one producer plant, and then there could be two other animals (secondary consumers) that eat the three primary consumers, and so on. If you draw a line showing relationships between all the organisms involved it looks like a web.
