Zeitschrift für Ökosystem und Ökologie

Abstrakt

Terrestrial and Aquatic Food Webs: Interlinking the Food Webs

Asim Ali, Brian Gagosh Nayyar

The food chains make interconnections to form a large or complex food web. The terrestrial and aquatic food webs are different from each other in some perspectives e.g. biogeochemistry, life history, growth rates, resource pulses persistency and physical properties of water and air. But both food webs of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem also share the some similarities e.g. need of scavengers to both. The terrestrial food webs and aquatic food webs are interlinked and provide the reciprocal subsidies to each other. The main purpose to study the food webs in different ecosystems (Aquatic and terrestrial) is to know about the different patterns of nutrients and energy flow through one food web to another. And also to explore and know about the dependency of food webs of different ecosystems on each other. Riparian forests, river banks and streams etc. are the ideal places to observe the interlinking of terrestrial and aquatic food webs, there can be measurement of prey flux occur easily and consumption by consumers also. It still remains somehow controversial and poorly elucidated to know and understand the causes of systematic variations between the ecosystems. Much of speculations have derived from the contrasts of terrestrial ecosystems and aquatic ecosystems. The terrestrial food webs and aquatic food webs are highly interlinked; the disturbances in one ecosystem cause the disturbance in both. The human activities have bad impacts on the both ecosystems. The need of study of food webs is very necessary because the species are interlinked and the removal or extinction of even one species due to the human activities can cause the fall of whole food chain.