This food web shows the feeding relationship in a taiga biome. A food web shows the complex feeding relationships and paths between organisms within an ecosystem. Their is a difference between food webs and food chains. For example, a food chain is like fish eats algae, shark eats fish and humans eat shark. A food web is complex, with different paths between organisms. A food web has producers, that produce their own energy and consumers, that rely on other organisms for energy. Food webs have trophic levels. Trophic levels are positions in a food web. Primary producers don’t count, but the 1st trophic level the primary producer and the secondary consumer would be the 2nd level, and so on.This food web has 3 tertiary levels and In this food web the producers are grass, berries and trees. The cottontail, porcupine, deer, caribou, insects and moose are the primary consumers. Minks, ermines, wolverines and skunks are the secondary consumers, while the tertiary consumers are the owls, foxes, hawks and snakes.
Removing the porcupine
In this food web the porcupine is a primary consumer. It also holds the first trophic level in this ecosystems food web. The porcupine consumes berries and the tree, but is eaten by the ermine. This also means consuming or transferring energy. If you take away the berries, the deer will thrive because it has more berries to eat, rather then sharing them with the porcupines. Thriving deer mean the wolverine can thrive, and so can the fox. If you take out the porcupine, there will be no energy or food for the ermine. No ermines mean no food for the snowy owl, because all the owl consumes is the ermine. There would also be more trees, so the moose would thrive. Because the wolverine also consumes moose, this organism would thrive too. This also means that the arctic fox would do well in this ecosystem because of the thriving number of wolverines.