How many types of food chains there are in the marine or freshwater ecosystem?

Question

How many types of food chains there are in the marine or freshwater ecosystem?

Answer 1

Hi Hrithik,

This is really a very BIG question and also one that is rather subjective.

The first problem is to define your idea or meaning of a "food chain".

In theory we can speak of the entire marine habitat as one food chain (actually food web would be a more accurate term) and the entire freshwater ecosystem as another.  In this instance there would be 2.

Another way would be to organize your "food chains" by geographical areas (that include both marine and freshwater habitats).  In this case there would be hundreds of thousands (or more).

Yet another way would be to base each "food chain" by each of the organisms that are the lowest prey in the chain.  In this case there would be too many to count.

Another way would be to determine if a "food chain" is "balanced" or "unbalanced" (see the last of the links below).  In this case there would again be just 2.

There is one other way to answer this.  However, this answer depends entirely on how the question was given to you.  If your instructor/teacher asked you specifically, "How many TYPES of food chains there are...", you can answer correctly that there is only 1 type of "food chain" and that is the type of food chain where the lowliest organism (let's say algae) is consumed by the next up the chain (say a crab), that is eaten by the next up the chain (let's say a Octopus), that is eaten by the next up the chain (let's say a Grooper), that is eaten by the next up the chain (let's say a shark), that is eaten by the top predator in the chain (let's say a human).  Of course, this answer risks being thought of by the teacher as a "smart alec" reply.  However, you could explain to the teacher that you were not trying to be a smarty-pants, but made THAT choice after considering all of the other alternatives that you could think of and then explain each of them to him/her as I have done... that would at least show that you gave this question serious thought.

I hope this helps.  Best of luck.

Hiking Tony