Consumer-resource systems
Encyclopedia
Consumer-resource interactions are the core motif of ecological food chains or food webs, and are an umbrella term for a variety of more specialized types of biological species interactions including prey-predator (see predation
Predation
In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey . Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption...

), host-parasite (see parasitism
Parasitism
Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Traditionally parasite referred to organisms with lifestages that needed more than one host . These are now called macroparasites...

), plant-herbivore
Herbivore
Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

 and victim-exploiter systems. These kinds of interactions have been studied and modeled by population ecologists for close on a century, as reviewed in synthetic monographs on this topic by Murdoch et al. and Turchin. Species at the bottom of the food chain, such as algae
Algae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

 and other autotrophs, consume non-biological resources, such as minerals and nutrients of various kinds, and they derive their energy from light (photons) or chemical sources. Species higher up in the food chain survive by consuming other species and can be classified by what they eat and how they obtain or find their food.

Classification of consumer types

Various terms have arisen to define consumers by what they eat, such as meat-eating carnivore
Carnivore
A carnivore meaning 'meat eater' is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging...

s, fish-eating piscivore
Piscivore
A piscivore is a carnivorous animal which eats primarily fish. Piscivory was the diet of early tetrapods , insectivory came next, then in time reptiles added herbivory....

s, insect-eating insectivore
Insectivore
An insectivore is a type of carnivore with a diet that consists chiefly of insects and similar small creatures. An alternate term is entomophage, which also refers to the human practice of eating insects....

s, plant-eating herbivore
Herbivore
Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

s, seed-eating granivores, and fruit-eating frugivore
Frugivore
A frugivore is a fruit eater. It can be any type of herbivore or omnivore where fruit is a preferred food type. Because approximately 20% of all mammalian herbivores also eat fruit, frugivory is considered to be common among mammals. Since frugivores eat a lot of fruit they are highly dependent...

s. An extensive classification of consumer categories based on a list of feeding behaviors exists. Another way of categorizing consumers is based on a biomass transformation web (BTW) formulation that organizes resources into five components: live and dead animal, live and dead plant, and particulate (i.e. broken down plant and animal) matter. It also distinguishes between consumers that gather their resources by moving across landscapes from those that mine their resources by becoming sessile
Sessility (botany)
In botany, sessility is a characteristic of plants whose flowers or leaves are borne directly from the stem or peduncle, and thus lack a petiole or pedicel...

 once they have located a stock of resources large enough for them to feed on during completion of a full life history stage. To avoid confusing nomenclatures and distinguish between such adjectives as herbivorous and phytophagous, which often interchangeably applied to plant eating insects, BTW uses Latin etymology (vorare=to eat) and Greek etmology (phagous=eating or devouring) to distinguish between species that respectively gather and mine resources.

A fully inclusive nomenclature is shown in Figure 1. Words for miners are of Greek etymology and words for gatherers are of Latin etymology. Thus a bestivore, such as a cat, predates live animals (Latin: bestia=animal) while a sarcophage, such as a botfly
Botfly
A botfly is any fly in the family Oestridae, which includes all the members of the former families Cuterebridae, Gasterophilidae, and Hypodermatidae. It is the only family of flies whose larvae live as obligate parasites within the bodies of mammals, with the exception of a few screwworm flies in...

 larva mines live flesh and a zontanophage (Greek: zontanos=alive), such as a leaf miner, mines live plant material. A carcasivore (Latin: carcasium=carcass), such as white-backed vulture, scavenge animal carcasses while a necrophage (Greek: nekros=dead body), such as a blowfly, mines dead flesh. Victivores (Latin: victus=living) gather live plant material and thus include frugivores, nectivores, graminivores, granivores and folivores as subcategories. Lectivores, such as many termites, gather dead plant material (Latin: lectus=bed which is the root of the word litter, as in leaf-litter) and thanatophages (Greek: thanatos=death), such as pillbugs mine piles of dead plant material. Carnivore and herbivore are generic multigroup categories for gathers respectively of animal and plant material, irrespective of whether live or dead. Croppers, scavengers, and detritivores are gatherers respectively of live, dead, and particulate material. Parasites, saprophages, and decomposers are miners respectively of live, dead, and particulate material.

Specialist totivores (gatherers)

  • Folivore
    Folivore
    In zoology, a folivore is a herbivore that specializes in eating leaves. Mature leaves contain a high proportion of hard-to-digest cellulose, less energy than other types of foods, and often toxic compounds. For this reason folivorous animals tend to have long digestive tracts and slow metabolisms....

  • Frugivore
    Frugivore
    A frugivore is a fruit eater. It can be any type of herbivore or omnivore where fruit is a preferred food type. Because approximately 20% of all mammalian herbivores also eat fruit, frugivory is considered to be common among mammals. Since frugivores eat a lot of fruit they are highly dependent...

  • Carnivore
    Carnivore
    A carnivore meaning 'meat eater' is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging...

  • Insectivore
    Insectivore
    An insectivore is a type of carnivore with a diet that consists chiefly of insects and similar small creatures. An alternate term is entomophage, which also refers to the human practice of eating insects....

  • Molluscivore
    Molluscivore
    A molluscivore is a carnivorous animal which eats mainly molluscs. The term durophagy is used to describe this eating behavior.Several species of pufferfish and loaches fit this category...

  • Piscivore
    Piscivore
    A piscivore is a carnivorous animal which eats primarily fish. Piscivory was the diet of early tetrapods , insectivory came next, then in time reptiles added herbivory....

  • Avivore
    Avivore
    An avivore is a specialized predator of birds, with birds making up a large proportion of its diet. Such bird-eating animals come from a range of groups.-Birds:Birds that are specialized predators of birds include certain accipiters and falcons...

  • Spongivore
    Spongivore
    A spongivore is an organism that feeds primarily on animals of the Phylum Porifera, commonly called sea sponges.-Examples:The hawksbill turtle is one of the few animals known to feed primarily on sponges. It is the only known spongivorous reptile...

  • Graminivore
    Graminivore
    In zoology, a graminivore is an herbivorous animal that feeds primarily on grass...

  • Granivore
  • Nectarivore
    Nectarivore
    In zoology, nectarivore is an animal which eats the sugar-rich nectar produced by flowering plants. Most nectarivores are insects or birds, but there are also nectarivorous mammals, notably several species of bats in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, as well as the Australian Honey Possum...

  • Palynivore
    Palynivore
    In zoology, a palynivore is an herbivorous animal which selectively eats the nutrient-rich pollen produced by angiosperms and gymnosperms. Most true palynivores are insects or mites...

  • Bacterivore
    Bacterivore
    Bacterivores are free-living, generally heterotrophic organisms, exclusively microscopic, which obtain energy and nutrients primarily or entirely from the consumption of bacteria. Many species of amoeba are bacterivores, as well as other types of protozoans. In common all species of bacteria will...

  • Detritivore
    Detritivore
    Detritivores, also known as detritophages or detritus feeders or detritus eaters or saprophages, are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus . By doing so, they contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles...


Specialist olophages (miners)

  • Hematophagy
    Hematophagy
    Hematophagy is the practice of certain animals of feeding on blood...

  • Myrmecophagy
    Myrmecophagy
    Myrmecophagy is a feeding behavior defined by the consumption of termites or ants, particularly in those animal species whose diets are largely or exclusively composed of said insect types....

  • Lepidophagy
    Lepidophagy
    Lepidophagy is a specialised feeding behaviour in fish that involves eating of scales of other fish. Lepidophagy is widespread, having been independently evolved in at least five freshwater families and seven marine families...

  • Mucophagy
    Mucophagy
    Mucophagy is feeding on mucus of fishes or invertebrates. It may also refer to consumption of mucus or dried mucus in primates.There are mucophagous parasites, such as some sea lice that attach themselves to gill segments of fish....

  • Ophiophagy
    Ophiophagy
    Ophiophagy is a specialized form of feeding or alimentary behavior of animals which hunt and eat snakes. There are ophiophagous mammals , birds , lizards , and even other snakes, such as the Central and South American mussuranas and...

  • Xylophagy
    Xylophagy
    Xylophagy is a term used in ecology to describe the habits of an herbivorous animal whose diet consists primarily of wood. The word derives from Greek ξυλοφάγος "eating wood", from ξύλον "wood" and φαγεῖν "to eat", an ancient Greek name for a kind of a worm-eating bird...

  • Coprophagy
  • Geophagy
    Geophagy
    Geophagy is the practice of eating earthy or soil-like substances such as clay, and chalk. It exists in animals in the wild and also in humans, most often in rural or preindustrial societies among children and pregnant women...

  • Osteophagy
    Osteophagy
    Osteophagy is the practice whereby herbivores consume bones. This practice usually occurs place in a nutrient-deficient environment. The animals consume the bones in order to obtain such necessary elements as phosphorus and calcium.-References:...

  • Oophagy
    Oophagy
    Oophagy , literally "egg eating", is the practice of embryos feeding on eggs produced by the ovary while still inside the mother's uterus. The word oophagy is formed from the classical Greek ᾠόν and classical Greek φᾱγεῖν ....

  • Ovophagy
  • Placentophagy
    Placentophagy
    Placentophagy is the act of mammals eating the placenta of their young after childbirth.The placenta contains high levels of prostaglandin which stimulates involution of the uterus, in effect cleaning the uterus out...


See also

  • food web
    Food web
    A food web depicts feeding connections in an ecological community. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two categories called trophic levels: 1) the autotrophs, and 2) the heterotrophs...

  • predation
    Predation
    In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey . Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption...

  • Scavenger
    Scavenger
    Scavenging is both a carnivorous and herbivorous feeding behavior in which individual scavengers search out dead animal and dead plant biomass on which to feed. The eating of carrion from the same species is referred to as cannibalism. Scavengers play an important role in the ecosystem by...

  • Herbivore
    Herbivore
    Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

  • Omnivore
    Omnivore
    Omnivores are species that eat both plants and animals as their primary food source...

  • Cannibalism
    Cannibalism
    Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

  • Trophallaxis
    Trophallaxis
    Trophallaxis is the transfer of food or other fluids among members of a community through mouth-to-mouth or anus-to-mouth feeding. It is most highly developed in social insects such as ants, termites, wasps and bees. The word was introduced by the entomologist William Morton Wheeler in 1918...

  • List of feeding behaviours
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