the.com/food web
nature's supply chain, minus the shareholders and with more cannibalism.
means a map of who eats whom in an ecosystem, showing energy flowing through many overlapping feeding paths rather than one straight line.
from ecologists in the early 1900s started with the simpler food chain model, then realized real ecosystems are tangled messes of interlocking chains, so charles elton popularized the more accurate web metaphor in 1927.
not a chainfood chains are single paths, webs are the whole tangle
energy lossonly about 10 percent transfers to the next level
keystone removalone species gone can collapse the entire web
decomposers includedeven fungi and bacteria get a seat at the table