Question

1. What is cycled in a food chain?

2. What would happen in the food chain cycle if decomposers did not exist?

Answer 1

1.) Energy flows through an ecosystem in one direction— through food chains. Food chains illustrate how energy flows through a sequence of organisms, and how nutrients are transferred from one organism to another. Food chains usually consist of producers, consumers, and decomposers.

2.) Imagine what would happen if there were no decomposers. Wastes and the remains of dead organisms would pile up and the nutrients within the waste and dead organisms would not be released back into the ecosystem. Producers would not have enough nutrients. Essentially, many organisms could not exist.