Ecology Thread

I noticed many ants around a leaf, eating it a little by little. This means that ants are primary consumers because they're eating the primary producers.

I saw a rotting jackfruit. Would the bacteria from the rotting jackfruit be affecting the other organisms or will there be any at all? And would the rotting jackfruit still be part of the biotic factor?

Where on the trophic structure are ants? They eat plants, dead animals, and bugs.

I noticed a fallen jackfruit and a rotten durian fruit that a whole bunch of flies and ants were eating. In this situation, the ants were the primary consumers and the rotten jackfruit and the durian were the primary producers. I also noticed an ant hill which could be a mini biosphere. Around it were a line of ants that were carrying dead pieces of a roach. This proves that even though roaches are above the ants on the food chain, there is a way that the ants can consume it too. One other major thing in the rainforest was all the plants, including trees, fruit, flowers and grass. All of these are primary producers because they do photosynthesis to create their own food. In this whole thing, sunlight, water and air were the biggest abiotic factors in all that I noticed today.

I learned that one type of organisms can effect other organisms in the same food chain.

How do ants help the ecosystem?

are decomposers at the top of the food chain because they eat stuff that other organisms can't?

I noticed that while the rainforest was one big ecosystem, there were lots of subsections inside of it.

whenever i saw fruit, that had fallen or looked rotten. there were always insects such as mosquitos and flies crowding around.

What happens when an animal goes extinct? How does that affect the biome?

I saw the mushrooms on the forest floor surrounded by dead leaves. This reinforces the fact that they are decomposers.

Whoops, I seem to have made an error in my diagram. Actually, the mosquitoes are eaten by spiders, not plants.

    The day we went out to the rainforest, It had rained earlier, and the ground was still wet and muddy. I saw lots of ants and bugs crawling around, and I think their increased activity was because of the fresh, wet earth. The muddy soil gives water to the plants I saw around me in the rainforest, which take in water through their roots. I noticed an old rotting fruit, possibly a durian, hanging from one of the trees, with lots of bugs swarming around on it. The leaves of the plants were also had holes in them, from the insects chewing on them. This is an ecosystem, with trophic levels. The plants (1st trophic level, producers) take in water and sunlight, executing the process of photosynthesis. Some of the glucose the plants make is stored in the fruit, which the bugs (2nd trophic level, consumers) eat, along with the leaves, to gain energy. Birds and snakes (3rd trophic level, consumers) come to the rainforest as well, and they eat the bugs for food. This is an ecosystem.

    Which level on the trophic structure would an animal that eats both plants and animals be? For example, a bluejay eats both seeds and bugs. Seeds are from the 1st trophic level: producers. Bugs are from the 2nd trophic level: primary consumers. If a bluejay just ate bugs, it would be a secondary consumer. But it also eats seeds, so would it be a primary or secondary consumer? Also, hawks are tertiary consumers. But us humans could eat hawks if we wanted to. So are there names for levels after the tertiary levels, and what animals do they contain?