Pond Food Chain Online Biology Tutors Tutorpace

Pond Food Chain Online Biology Tutors Tutorpace Pond is an aquatic ecosystem. The food chain can be defined as the transfer of energy from plants througha series of organisms with repeated eating and being eaten Or who eats whom .At each trophic level a largeportion of the potential energy is lost as heat. The number of steps in a food chain is usually limited to four orfive, since the energy decreases during the transfer from one step to another. In any food chain, energyflows from producers to primary consumers, from primary consumers to secondary consumers, fromsecondary consumers to tertiary consumers and so on. Producers prepare their own food using solar energyand convert it to chemical energy. In a pond ecosystem the food chain starts from phytoplankton and goes through zoo plankton, smaller fish,bigger fish, and birds and so on. The producers in a pond ecosystem are macrophytes and phytoplanktons.The phytoplankton when presentin abundance, gives the pond water a greenish colour.The phytoplankton usually comprises diatoms, bluegreen algae, green algae etc. In pond the macro consumers are the animals. They can be categorized into: 1. Primary consumers 2. Secondaryconsumers 3. Tertiary consumers The primary consumers feed on living plants or plant remains. Theprimary consumers are the zoo planktons and benthos. The zooplanktons include dianoflagellates,heliozoans, and copepods while Mollusca and annelids form the bottom dwelling forms. The secondaryconsumers are the carnivores which feed on primary consumers like predaceous insects, small fishes, frogsetc. The tertiary consumers are some large fish like game fish that feed on the secondary consumers.