Food Chain And Food Web Difference

Grazing food chain and detritus food chain.

Food chain and food web difference. Both food chains and food webs, shares three types of organisms in a food chain: But, while a food chain only shows a singular path, the food web shows how the paths are connected. From the food chain, we get to know how organisms are connected with each other.

A food web is made up of many interconnected and overlapping food. An organism of higher level trophic feeds on a specific organism of lower trophic level: Food webs show how plants and animals are connected in many ways to help them all survive.

Wikipedia says, “a food chain differs from a food web, because the complex network of different animals’ feeding relations are aggregated and the chain only follows a direct, linear. By comparison, the food web has multiple levels of trophic levels made up of multiple species. Like a spiders web, if one part is removed, it can affect the whole web.

Member of higher trophic level feed upon many organisms Still, they both represent the same interactions, connecting different species based on who takes the role of the hunter and who takes the role of the prey. In the food web, the removal of a group of organisms does not disturb the food web.

A multitude of networks showing the flow of energy: This complicated situation develops when greater number of species feed on many kinds of prey. Below illustration shows a summary of the difference between food chain and food web.

Food chain follows a single path whereas food web follows multiple paths. Most organisms can eat, and be eaten, by many different animals. Food chainfood webin a food chain, there is a straight line from producers to first consumers to second consumers to third consumersin a food web, each organism eats and is eaten by 2 or more organisms.