Which term describes the network of feeding relationships in an ecosystem?

• A. Food chain
• B. Food web
• C. Competition
• D. Succession

Answer: (B)

Understanding how energy moves through an ecosystem is shown by the food web, the interconnected map of who eats whom. A food web captures many feeding relationships among producers, herbivores, carnivores, and decomposers, and it explains how a change in one species can ripple through the system. In real environments, organisms eat more than one kind of prey and may be preyed upon by several predators, creating a complex network rather than a single line. This complexity is what the term food web communicates. A food chain, on the other hand, is a simple, linear sequence like grass → insect → frog → hawk; it’s a simplification and doesn’t reflect the many connections in a real ecosystem. Competition describes organisms fighting for limited resources, not a network of feeding links. Succession is the process of ecological change in a community over time, not the pattern of feeding relationships. So the term that describes the network of feeding relationships in an ecosystem is food web.