How are producers, consumers, and decomposers linked in a food chain?

The chain is linked in this order: Producers ##rarr## Consumers ##rarr## Decomposers

The Food chain begins with the producers .

• Producers are so called because they produce energy. Producers are mostly plants that photosynthesise but they can also be other organisms that carry out such as algae.
• The animals that eat plants (or other stuff that carry out photosynthesis) are called consumers .

There are different types of consumers:

The animal that eats Producers ##rarr## Primary Consumer The animal that eats Primary Consumer ##rarr## Secondary Consumer The animal that eats Secondary Consumer ##rarr## Tertiary Consumer

In some cases, there is an animal that eats the Tertiary Consumer; it's called a Quaternary consumer.

Now, each plant and animal you see in the image above will die one day. Just like every human(also type of consumer) dies one day. That is a fact. That's how nature works.

So when the producers, the snail, the frog, or the fox dies, the decomposers come to the scene and break down the organism into smaller parts. That's when we say something decomposes.

The decomposers are usually and fungi .

This is a process that also releases smelly gases like ammonia . So animal carcasses (dead bodies) start to smell when decomposers get to work.

But why exactly are these bodies broken down? That's because the chemicals which the dead bodies contain can go into the soil and then nourish new producers so that it can then provide energy to new consumers.

This is a cycle of how energy is recycled on earth. Because since the day the earth was formed, no energy has been added to or taken away from the planet. The same is being used over and over again. And decomposers play an important role in that cycle.

Usually , a food chain isn't that simple. In an area, it's a complex web of many hundreds, thousands of organisms which have an inter relationship with one another. In this way a single organism can be a secondary consumer and a tertiary consumer simultaneously.

Such as the fox in the example below:

Secondary: Oak tree##rarr##Squirrel##rarr##Fox

Tertiary: Leaf litter##rarr##Earth worm##rarr##Wood mouse##rarr##Fox