A pond supports a wide variety of animal and plant life which collectively forms a food web, also referred to as a food chain and also much more officially known as an ecosystem. The food web describes how life’s energy flows throughout the pond, or what eats what. An untidy pond supports the most species.
Producer Level
The maker level of a pond’s food internet collectively contains the many species of rooted and floating aquatic plant life which absorb things such as water, sunlight, air and soil minerals. The plant life closes those things to living plant tissue which supports all the other levels of the pond’s food web. Producers include microscopic, floating plant life together known as algae and bigger water plants that are frozen.
Main Clients
The primary consumers in a pond’s food internet consist of tiny herbivorous creatures which feed on algae and other aquatic plants to maintain themselves. These creatures include insects, tadpoles, very little fish and snails. They also incorporate a number of nearly microscopic creatures collectively known as zooplankton.
Secondary Consumers
Another strand from the aquatic food web is that the secondary consumers. They eat the primary consumers. This second level of creature consumers contains many species of fish, frogs, other amphibians, crayfish and mammals such as turtles and water snakes.
Tertiary Customers
The aquatic food web also comprises the tertiary consumers, which consume the creatures of their secondary and primary levels. This third level of creature consumer contains fish- and also frog-eating water birds, fish-eating hawks, numerous tiny mammals and human beings. Sometimes human beings and predator birds are classified as leading consumers instead of tertiary consumers.
Decomposers
Bacteria, fungi and insect/animal scavengers finish the pond’s food internet, breaking down dead and decaying aquatic plants and animals, releasing their elemental nutrients. The recycling of nutrients from decomposers create the nutrients available to new generations of crops which are eaten by tiny creatures, which are eaten by bigger animals, which are absorbed by the largest creatures.