This document compares food webs and food chains. It explains that a food chain shows a single, linear pathway of organisms eating one another, starting with a producer like grass and ending with a top predator like a hawk. A food web is more complex, showing multiple possible feeding relationships and pathways through an ecosystem. It provides the example of a hawk that may prey on mice, squirrels or frogs, rather than just the single organism depicted in a food chain.

1. Chemistry &zoology department
Faculty of science
Mansoura University
Comparison between
food webs & food
chains
Student : Mahmoud Mohamed Moustafa El-Sharkawy
Dr : Abeir El – Saeed Abd Rabou

2. What is a Food Chain?
A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. It shows
who is eating who .
A food chain always starts with a green plant and ends with a
producer.
All plants are producers & animals are consumers.
The food chain ends with a predator –on the top of the food
chain- .
It also shows the transfer of energy through living organisms
from the primary producers ending with consumers and
predators .
At each stage , more energy is lost as heat as the development
of the organism gets more complex and need more energy to
still alive.
Example for a food chain :
Grass is eaten by Grasshopper is eaten by Toad is eaten
by Snake is eaten by Hawk

3. The hawk is the end peredator of the food chain .
What is food web :
It consists of more than food web .
It shows the different paths the organism can get food with ,
in conflict to food chains that shows only one way .
For example :
A hawk might also eat a mouse, a squirrel, a frog or some other
animal. The snake may eat a beetle, a caterpillar, or some other
animal. And so on for all the other animals in the food chain.
It is more complexed than food chain.