VPE 511: Environment and Environmental Hygiene (2+1)

TYPES OF FOOD CHAIN

• Grazing Food Chain
• Parasitic Food Chain
• Detritus Food Chain

Grazing Food Chain

• Food chain begins from a green plant. The food chain in aquatic and terrestrial grazing ecosystems are shown below

Components	Aquatic Food Chain	Terrestrial Food Chain
Producer	Phytoplankton	Grass
Primary Consumer	Zooplankton	Grass hopper
Secondary Consumer	Fish	Snake

Parasitic Food Chain

• The food chain begins with plant but then goes herbivores of huge number of ectoparasites (parasites living outside the host)
• Dead plant and animals ---> Earthwork ---> Frog ---> Snake

Detritus Food chain

• The food chain starts from organic matter of decaying animal and plant to microorganisms and then to detritus feeding organism, the follows to their predators.
• The example is mangrove ecosystem. The food chain follows the following steps
• Mangrove leaves fall into the warm and shallow water.
• The leaves are eaten by fungi, bacteria, protozoa, etc, living on algae. Algae are eaten by small animals, like crabs, copepods, insect larvae, etc.
• Small animals are eaten by small fish and then by large fish followed by fish eating birds.