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Producers and Consumers

Author: Nathan Lampson

 

Producers are organisms that produce energy. One characteristic of producers is that they use inorganic nutrients in order to produce organic nutrients.

 

Consumers are organisms that can't consume inorganic nutrients and require producers as their source of energy.

 

In order to visualize the interactions between producers and consumers as well as the flow of energy through a community, food webs are used.  This food web illustrates how corn is eaten by chickens, chickens are eaten by foxes, foxes are  eaten by decomposers (worms), and the inorganic nutrients produced by decomposers (worms) are once again able to be used by corn.

Producers and Consumers