A meadow is a land plot on which perennial herbaceous vegetation forms, forming the corresponding cover. Usually, meadows arise on highly fertile soils, and in order for grass to form, a favorable water and temperature regime of the environment is needed. Meadow food chains have their own characteristics. The first link is usually made up of diverse - annual and perennial - plants that grow in abundance there. Among them are cereals, legumes, rosette and creeping flowers, well-known to all: bells, poppies, daisies, cornflowers, clover and many others.
Meadow Supply Chains
In the meadow, as in other areas where animals live in abundance and plants grow, these food sequences are formed according to standard rules. The participants in the process are traditionally divided into producers and consumers. The former consume energy and nutrition for their functioning directly from materials that are not organic. So, most green plants receive nutrition through the process of photosynthesis in the sun. And microorganisms living in the soil in the meadow (in one gram of fertile land up to a million or more) use gases and salts to produce energy. Such producers are, as a rule, the first link in the food chain of the meadow. They are consumed by consumers of the first plan, who eat plant food, receiving from it the necessary energy. Next come the consumers of the second (third, fourth) level, which are carnivorous, that is, eat animal food. Closes the meadow food chain, as a rule, the strongest, fastest and largest predator that is found in this area. Such animals are usually not so many, and their populations are limited.
Food chains in the meadow. Examples
Now let's move on to compiling these sequences. Usually they can consist of several links (sometimes 5-6). To create a food chain for a meadow, knowledge is required: who lives in the area, what is the food base of a particular animal. We offer the following chain:
clover - butterfly - dragonfly - frog - already - hawk.
The first link in this 6-link sequence is a plant that receives inorganic substances from soil and air and converts them into vital energy through sunlight and photosynthesis. The butterfly, the consumer of the first type, feeds on plant and nectar. A dragonfly eats a butterfly, a frog eats a dragonfly. Already eats a frog. But a bird of prey can eat it itself, but a fox, for example, can also act as the last link.
In the pasture
A short chain of 4 links may exist, for example:
wheat - field mouse - snake (viper) - bird of prey (kite or hawk).
Another food chain characteristic of meadow zones of the Russian Federation of the middle band:
annual buttercup plant - orthoptera insect grasshopper - mammal shrew - bird of prey buzzard.
And on a pasture, meadow, where cows and other animals graze, a food chain can be built even with the participation of people, as one of the final links:
the vegetation that the cow eats — the cow that provides milk and meat — is human.