All living things are interconnected by food relationships in which some individuals eat others. The regularity of these relations is the same in all ecosystems of the world, but their representatives differ depending on the specific habitat. What organisms are involved in the food chain in the taiga? You will find examples and its main features later in the article.
Food chain in the taiga
The trophic or food chain is a sequential series of living things, where each subsequent organism eats the previous one. Throughout the world, its scheme is the same:
- Producers (plants) - produce organic matter.
- Consumers (animals) - consume organic matter.
- Reducers (fungi and bacteria) - destroy dead organisms into organic and inorganic compounds.
To understand how the power supply circuit is built in the taiga, you need to understand what kind of natural zone it is. On our planet, it is located only in the Northern Hemisphere, starting immediately after the tundra zone. Taiga belongs to the temperate climate zone and covers an area of about 15 million km 2 . It stretches across the north of Eurasia (from Sweden to Japan and the Chukchi Peninsula) and North America (from Alaska to eastern Canada).
Basically, taiga is represented by swamps, coniferous forests and small-leaved forests. Typical power circuit diagrams in the taiga look like this:
- Nuts - squirrel - lynx.
- Grass - insects - rodent shrew - owl.
- Tree bark - bark beetle - tit - eagle.
- Seeds of cones - chipmunk - marten - lynx.
- Grass - Elk - Wolf.
Pasture chains
Most food chains begin with plants, which is why they are called "pasture". In the taiga, the first link in the trophic row are pine, larch, spruce, blueberry, lingonberry, juniper, currant, dwarf cedar, rhododendron, moss and various herbs.
The second link of the taiga food chain are herbivorous animals that feed on twigs, nectar, bark, seeds, and fruits. This includes chipmunks, squirrels, moles, mice, lemmings, hares, capercaillie, hazel grouse, sparrows and ungulates (musk deer, wapiti, moose, deer, wild boars, Canadian bison).
The intermediate row of the chain is occupied by carnivores and omnivores. These also include birds, rodents and some insects. In addition, forest frogs, salamanders, newts, American toads, snakes and predators (minks, ferrets, sables, martens) are added here. The chains of lynxes, wolves, eagles, owls, hawks, wolverines and foxes, as well as the largest predators of the taiga - bears complete the chain.
Detrital chains
Detrital food chains in the taiga, unlike pasture ones, do not begin with plants, but detritus — the dead remains of plants, animals and their excreta. Such trophic rows can be very long and are most often found in forests where fallen foliage creates the majority of the nutrient medium.
The second link in this chain is detritophages - animals and microorganisms that feed on detritus. It can be termites, grave-bugs, wood lice, millipedes, insect larvae, flies. Further, the chain continues, as well as pasture.
There is another version of the series. In it, foliage is processed by soil bacteria, which, in turn, are absorbed by protozoa. They are absorbed by fungi, which are consumed by worms, insects, rodents and other omnivorous animals.