What is a Food Chain?
Food Chain describes the order in which organisms, or living things, depend on each other for food. Every ecosystem, or community of living things, has one or more food chains. Most food chains start with organisms that make their own food, such as plants.
What is a Food Web?
A food web is a group of food chains within an ecosystem. Most living things eat more than one type of animal or plant. So their food chains overlap and connect. For example, the hawk that ate the squirrel also may eat fish. This makes the hawk a part of two food chains, or a food web.
Similarities
Both the food chain and food web represent flow of food and energy through various organisms (including plants) and point from the producers to the consumers. Both the food web and food chain include a number of organisms including both producers and consumers (as well as decomposers).
Difference
A food chain follows one path of energy and materials between species. A food web is more complex and is a whole system of connected food chains. In a food web, organisms are placed into different trophic levels. Producers are the basic trophic level while top predators are the peak level.
