What would a drawing of a food chain with 4 trophic levels look like?
1 Answer
It would look like a pyramid!
Explanation:
At the bottom you have the producers aka autotrophic livings (which use inorganic compounds to grow, produce energy, matter and so on..). These organisms would be plants, cyanobacterias, over all any organisms that do photosynthesis.
Warning: fungi aren't considered as producers but as decomposers.
All further levels are composed of heterotrophic organisms (which use organic compounds)
On the second level you find primary consumers such as small mammals, horses, deers, some insects (some are predators)... In other words any phytophagous organisms.
#=># They directly eat organic matter made by producers.
On the third level, the secondary consumers eat the primary consumers. For example, birds/frogs eat insects. Lions eat horses, rats would eat insects too and so on..
#=># They eat organisms that feed on producers.
On the same trend you have tertiary consumers that would feed on secondary consumers. Snakes eating frogs, bird of prey eating other birds.
On the top of the pyramid you can have "super-predators", for example bird of prey that eat snakes which feed on frogs that eat insects who are primary consumers.
Here the pyramid-shaped drawing is proportionate to the abundance of organisms composing each level.
With a very simplified 4 level trophic chain you could have:
The fruit from the blackberry bush (producer = first level) is eaten by the mice (primary consumer = second level) who is eaten by the snake (secondary consumer in that case = third level) and the hawk gets to eat the snake (tertiray consumer = fourth level)
