Trophic chains detrital

Important elements of such turnover are trophic chains or food chains. These are series of biogenic elements and energy transfer with food from one group of organisms to another. Eugene Odum (1913-2002) proposed to distinguish two major types of trophic chains positioned at different levels pasturable trophic chains and detrital trophic chains. 

Detrital trophic chain is associated with the consumption and decomposition of dead organic matter, i.e., detritus. On the surface and in the soil layer this matter is represented by the remains of higher plants and serves as food for small animals often called meiofauna (bacteria, fungi, numerous insects, their larvae, ground worms, etc.). They are in turn con-siuned by soil mammals (moles, shrews, mice, gophers, etc.). The latter return substantial part of their organic matter back to the pasturable trophic chain. 

All processes in the detrital trophic chain run with the participation of microorganisms if they are energy advantageous for them, and are called biochemical processes. They do not conflict with thermodynamic requirements, and microorganisms participating in these processes exist and multiply only under certain conditions optimum for their life-sustaining activity. Such conditions are determined by temperatme, pressure, salinity, acidity, water composition and source of energy. 

Consortiums of microorganisms equidistant from the main source of sustenance in the same trophic chain form trophic levels. In the detrital... 

Anoxic environment is described by values Eh < -0.1 V, practically total absence of unfixed oxygen and elevated content of reduced forms of compounds. Under this environment oxygen-free breathing becomes the basis of life-sustaining activity for microorganisms, among which an ever greater role is played by archaebacteria. With this environment are associated two levels of detrital trophic chain. 

---