Tropical rainforests are the species-richest biomes in the world
and very complex ecosystems.
There are therefore hundreds, maybe
thousands of different food chains that together form a huge food web.
Here are a few examples on food chains in tropical rainforests of
Australia.
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Levels in a Tropical Rainforest Food Chain
The simplest way to think about it is that there are four levels in the
tropical rainforest food chain (there are actually often more):
2. Plant, insect and plankton eaters: frogs, fish, bandicoots, possums,
echidnas, most birds, wallabies and kangaroos
3. Small animal eaters: snakes, quolls, dunnarts, platypus,
kookaburras, owls, birds of prey
4. Larger animal eaters: pythons, crocodiles, dingoes, feral cats,
feral dogs
This is actually more complicated because most of animals eat different
things, like platypus
eats small fish but also plankton, so in a different food chain it
could be on a different level. But let's keep the things simple so far.
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What Eats What in a Tropical Rainforest in Australia?
Plants don't need to eat. They get their energy from photosynthesis.
Animals cannot do that trick and they have to eat.
Frogs eat mostly insects,
but some larger frogs also eat small fish,
reptiles, and other frogs. Small fish eat plankton. Bandicoots eat
insects, larvae, spiders,
worms, fruit, plant roots and grass seeds.
Possums
eat flowers, fruits and leaves of trees. Echidnas
eat ants and termites. Most birds eat
either small insects or nectar from flowers.
Most snakes eat small prey, like frogs, small reptiles, small mammals
and bird eggs. Quolls
are carnivorous marsupials
and they eat insects, birds and small
mammals.
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Tropical Rainforest Food Chain in Australia ctd..
Dunnarts eat insects and small reptiles.
Platypus eats mostly insects and plankton, but also frogs and small
fish.
Kookaburras differ from most other birds because they eat large insects
and small animals such as frogs, snakes, and even small mammals.
Owls
are nocturnal predators and they eat nocturnal
animals, which mostly are small mammals.
Raptors
are diurnal birds of prey like eagles,
hawks and kites. They eat diurnal animals like reptiles, other birds
and small mammals that are around during the day time.
Pythons are large snakes and they eat larger prey than most other
snakes, like wallabies and other medium sized mammals.
Crocodiles are top predators and they eat large prey including kangaroos,
cattle and humans.
Dingoes
are the largest land predators in Australia, and they eat anything from
fish to birds, mammals and reptiles.
Feral cats and feral dogs are
descendants of domestic cats and dogs who have gone back to the wild.
They eat birds, reptiles and small mammals.
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A Few Examples on Tropical Rainforest Food Chain
Here are a few examples on food chains in Australian tropical
rainforests:
Birds eat nectar from flowers, a quoll can eat a bird, an owl can eat a
quoll.
Bats
eat fruits from trees, a kookaburra
can eat a small bat, an eagle can eat a
kookaburra.
Possums eat leaves of trees, a python can eat a possum.
Kangaroos and wallabies eat plants, a crocodile
will eat a kangaroo or wallaby
if they go close to waters edge.
Fish eats plankton, platypus
eats small fish, a large bird of prey or a
crocodile will take a platypus if they can.
Frogs eat insects, snakes
eat frogs, dunnart can eat small snakes,
feral dogs can eat dunnarts.
Bandicoots
eat spiders and insect larvae, feral cats can eat bandicoots.
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All these food chains together make a tropical rainforest food web.
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