The position that an organism occupies in a food chain. For example, green plants (which obtain their energy directly from sunlight) are the primary producers; herbivores are primary consumers (and secondary producers). A carnivore that eats only herbivores is a secondary consumer and a tertiary producer. Many animals feed at several different trophic levels.
An individual layer on the pyramid of numbers which represents types of organisms living at parallel levels on food chains. All herbivores live at one level, all primary carnivores on the next level, all secondary carnivores on the next level, and so on. The animals on each level are remarkably distinct in size from those on other levels; there is a clear jump in size between an insect and a bird, for example.
The trophic biology of a taxon (species/family/class) fundamentally constrains its ability to convert productivity into individuals. Predator taxa require at least an order of magnitude more net primary productivity (NPP) to support an individual than the trophic level upon which it feeds; the more trophic links between NPP and a consumer taxocene (taxonomically related set of species within a community), the more energy is necessary to support viable populations of its individuals. If taxocene abundance is energy limited, consumer taxocenes that occupy broad NPP gradients should show a predominance of lower trophic levels at low NPP. Higher trophic levels should accrue as NPP increases, and taxocenes comprised largely of predators should be under-represented at lower NPP (Kaspari (2001) Glob. Ecol. & Biogeog. 10, 3).
Trophic level
- prograde motion
- prograde orbit
- program
- program analysis
- program compatibility
- program control
- program correctness proof
- program counter
- program decomposition
- program design
- program design language
- program development system
- program-erase cycle
- program file
- program library
- program listing
- programmable array logic
- programmable devices
- programmable electronic system
- programmable gate array
- programmable logic array
- programmable logic controller
- programmable logic device
- programmable matter
- programmable read-only memory