Food-chain herbivorous

Food chain Very simple pathway of nutrient flow. Ex. Carnivore > herbivore > plant. 

In a temperate forest ecosystem on Isle Royale, Michigan, ecologists found that it takes 762 pounds (346 kg) of plant food to support every 59 pounds (27 kg) of moose, and that 59 pounds of moose are required to support every one pound (0.45 kg) of wolf. The basic point is that massive amounts of energy do not flow from one trophic level to the next energy is lost at each stage of the food chain, so there are more plants than herbivores and more herbivores than carnivores. 

Plants are the base of the terrestrial food chain. The body tissue of herbivores feeding on these plants, and subsequently of omnivores and carnivores, is dependent on the isotopic composition of the plant material ingested, and therefore reflects the 813C values of either a C3 or C4 biome. The exact values are modified by metabolically induced fractionation as the food is digested and incorporated into different body tissues. At its simplest, it has been assumed... 

Fig.1 Generalized pelagic food web [ 13]. The old view of a simple food chain vertical line in this figure) with phytoplankton (mainly diatoms) at the base, herbivorous mesozoo-plankton (mainly copepods) at the second trophic level, and planktivorous fish has been extended to a pelagic food web including nanoplankton (<20 pm), picoplankton (<2 pm), and their protozoan feeders lower left). Herbivorous tunicates and jellyfish as primary carnivores also play a role, as do mixotrophic flagellates. The main pathway of energy flow depends on the nutrient scenarios [13]. DOC=dissolved organic carbon, HNF=heterotrophic nanoflageUates. From [13] with permission of Kluwer Academic Press...

FIGURE 10.1 Ciguatoxin. It passes through food chain from dinoflagellates to herbivorous and carnivorous fish, and humans. 

Two studies concerning levels in voles and rabbits living on sludge-amended land did not indicate any accumulation of nickel in these herbivores or in the plants they fed upon (Alberici et al. 1989 Dressier et al. 1986). The lack of significant bioaccumulation of nickel in aquatic organisms, voles, and rabbits indicates that nickel is not biomagnified in the food chain. 

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