Are Alligators Producers or Consumers?

Alligators are not producers as they are not plants, and do not help soil by decomposing dead animals. Rather, alligators are consumers because they eat other animals.

Every organism needs to obtain energy in order to live. An example of this is a plant getting energy from the sun. Some animals eat plants, others eat other animals. A food chain is the sequence of who eats whom in a biological community or ecosystem to obtain nutrition. Food chains typically start with a primary energy source such as the sun or boiling hot sea vents.

The next link that can be found in this chain is an organism that makes its own food from the primary energy source. An example of this would be photosynthetic plants that are able to make their own food using sunlight. After these organisms, come organisms that eat the autotrophs. These organisms are called herbivores or primary consumers. An example would be a rabbit eating grass.

The next link in the food chain is animals that eat herbivores. These animals are referred to as secondary consumers. An example of a secondary consumer would be a snake eating a rabbit that ate the grass. In addition, these animals are then eaten by even larger predators. (The snake might get eaten by an owl). Tertiary consumers are eaten by quaternary consumers, (hawks eating owls).

A flow of energy moves around the food chain from the sun or hydrothermal vent to a top predator. As this energy flows from organism to organism, energy is lost at each step. A network of many food chains is often referred to as a food web.

When organisms die, they are usually eventually eaten by detrivores (examples are vultures or worms). They are then broken down by decomposers (bacteria and fungi) and the exchange of energy continues.

Some organism’s positions within the food chain have been known to vary as their diets differ. For example, if a bear eats berries, the bear is functioning as a primary consumer. When a bear eats a plant eating rodent, it would be functioning as a secondary consumer. If it eats a salmon, its functioning as a tertiary consumer because the salmon is a secondary consumer that eats things such as herring. The herring eats zooplankton that eat phytoplankton, which make their own energy from sunlight.