herbivores is the third trophic level in a food chain.
what is the third trophic level in a food chain?
herbivores
the trophic level of an organism is the position it occupies in a food chain. a food chain is a succession of organisms that eat other organisms and may, in turn, be eaten themselves. the trophic level of an organism is the number of steps it is from the start of the chain. a food chain starts at trophic level 1 with primary producers such as plants, can move to herbivores at level 2, carnivores at level 3 or higher, and typically finish with apex predators at level 4 or 5. the path along the chain can form either a one-way flow or a food "web". ecological communities with higher biodiversity form more complex trophic paths.
trophic level
hairston, smith and slobodkin feuded that the ecological communities acted as food chains with three trophic levels. subsequent models expanded the argument to food chains with more than or fewer than three trophic levels. lauri oksanen argued that the top trophic level in a food chain increases the abundance of producers in food chains with an odd number of trophic levels (such as in hairston, smith and slobodkin's three trophic level model), but decreases the abundance of the producers in food chains with an even number of trophic levels. additionally, he argued that the number of trophic levels in a food chain increases as the productivity of the ecosystem increases.
trophic cascade