ENWC314 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Keystone Species, Trophic Species, Food Energy

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Entomology and Wildlife Conservation
• Course: ENWC314
• Professor: York Joanna

Document Summary

Firstly, the web has a high number of connections which is much higher on average than other food webs analyzed. This might be typical of marine food webs. Secondly, even at this level of complexity, the food web is highly aggregated. In many cases ecologists simplify food webs; 2 approaches are taken: Firstly, some taxonomic groups are lumped into trophic species; trophic species are a set organisms with identical prey species and identical predator species; species are typically grouped depending on the focus of the study. Secondly, instead of mapping the entire food web, only a part of the whole food web is isolated for analysis to keep things relatively simple: trophic levels. Within food webs we can recognize several different trophic levels. For long food chains, there are possible fifth and higher trophic levels. The length of a food chain is defined as the number of links running from a top predator to a basal species.