Importance of the Trophic Web

A trophic web is the set of feeding relationships that living beings of a ecosystem keep each other. The relevance of understanding it lies in the fact of understanding the possibilities of feeding most relevant within said ecosystem. This understanding will lead us to understand, for example, the possible messes that could arise from the extinction of a living being or the appearance of a new one as a consequence of man's actions. The trophic web It is therefore an important concept to conceive of the relationships between living beings as a whole, as a delicate and stable system within a determined geographical area.

Related to the concept of trophic web is the concept of food chain. Indeed, it will refer us to the possible categories that exist among living beings based on their diet. A basic category, for example, is that of producers, that is, that of those living beings that are capable of generating their own food and are capable of generating food for others; this category is represented by vegetables, which from the process called

photosynthesis generate their organic matter. Another basic category is that of consumers, either first order or second order, the first being those that consume the producers and the second being those that consume the consumers of first order. Finally, reference should be made to the decomposers, that is to say, to those organisms that are in charge of feeding on the remains of others that have died, a process through which it generates inorganic matter from organic matter.

The trophic web It will refer, then, to the specific relationships that different organisms of said categories will enter into with each other from the food point of view. Thus, for example, we can have an insect that feeds on vegetables that can be eaten by a animal that also feeds on vegetables (omnivore), and in turn, this being devoured by a predator. This example is quite simple, but it helps to give an idea of ​​what a trophic web. In a true network of this type, the relationships can be extremely complex, extremely important in terms of their number. It is for this circumstance that sometimes, an element that changes in said network can have unforeseen consequences for the entire ecosystem. Unfortunately there are many examples of this type of phenomenon due to the actions of man.