[Music] food chains and food webs allow us to see feeding relationships and the flow of energy through an ecosystem food chains show a linear flow of chemical energy food webs show all of the food chains in an ecosystem chemical energy flows from producers to consumers in aquatic ecosystems microscopic phytoplankton and algae are the main producers on land trees grasses and other plant species are the producers that start the food chains chemical energy in an ecosystem originates from the autotrophs who are able to produce their own food chemical energy is transferred from producers to herbivores organisms that consume plants chemical energy is then transferred to carnivores in other words energy is transferred from prey to predator the arrows in a food chain represent the flow of chemical energy energy flows in one direction once it is transferred it cannot flow back food webs show all of the food chains in an ecosystem energy flows from producers to herbivores to carnivores food webs allow us to see the interdependence of species and the biodiversity of an ecosystem if one species in an ecosystem significantly increases or decreases many other species will be affected in ways that are sometimes hard to predict for example if there was a sudden decrease in the zebra population well that would affect all of the Predators who had now faced more competition for food but if there were less tsipras then there would be more leaves and more leaves could maybe support more giraffes which could maybe support more lions which in turn could decrease the amount of competition amongst the Predators like we said it's hard to predict ecosystems often find ways to recover from changes the more biodiversity there is an ecosystem the more connections there are in the food web the more connections there are in the food web the more stable the ecosystem is as species are lost entire ecosystems are threatened and you never know which string is holding it all together [Music]