in this video we are going to learn about the difference between food chain and food web the difference is not that much it's very easy to understand so we will quickly look into it let's understand what is a food chain it is a straight single pathway through which food energy travels in the ecosystem now what I mean by that is let's say there's a tree tree and plants are basically known as autotrophs or producers then comes Harvey Boras animals who feed on plants and trees for energy and food they are also called as primary consumers then comes carnivorous animals who feed on the Hybris animals for food and energy like this if we notice it forms a linear straight chain where in one organism is eating another organism for food and energy you see the food energy is traveling from plants and trees to herbivorous animals and then to the carnivorous animals or in other words the high level organisms feed upon a single type of low level organisms for food and energy this is what is known as food chain I hope this part is clear in an ecosystem there are many types of species that exist and there are numerous amount of food chains you'll see many species eating another species for food and energy and that's how you will come across many food chains in an ecosystem now sometimes species of a particular community interacts directly as well as indirectly with the species of another community more often the indirect interaction between two species happens because of a third species overall species can influence one another in many different ways with this kind of indirect interaction among species food webs are formed I'll give you an example of a tertiary ecosystem let's say there is a plant which has some flaws then insect pollinators like bees grasshoppers of flies feed on these leaves and flowers many species of birds snakes and rats like to eat these flies and grasshoppers so this forms one kind of a food chain now within the same ecosystem let's introduce some species like rabbit squirrel and deer who feed on plants and trees some birds eat rabbit and squirrel then animals like Fox also eats rabbit and squirrel here we see another food chain between these two food chains you will find some interlink age wherein one species of animal is dependent on both the food chain now this inter linkage of food chain is called as a food web now this kind of inter linkage also happens between two different ecosystems we'll take an example of aquatic ecosystem fish 8 micro forms insects plants and leaves then small fish gets eaten by bigger fish like this the chain continues so this is another form of food chain of an aquatic ecosystem if you notice there's an interaction between these two food chain as I said fish eats insects flies leaves and flowers these insects and flies are also part of the terrestrial ecosystem and they have their own food chain but now all of a sudden there is an indirect interaction between the terrestrial food chain and the aquatic food chain that means there is an indirect interaction between species of different ecosystem now this kind of inter linkage of two different food chains regardless of which ecosystem they belong to forms a food web so basically the role of a food web is to reveal the patterns of energy flow through different species and ecosystem