Energy Web and Functions

The Red Sea reefs is an ecosystem that is home to a large amount of organisms. These vary from producers, consumers, and decomposers. In the food web shown, it can be seen that there are two organisms on the bottom. These organisms are producers, meaning they can produce their own food, some examples are seagrass and algae. Going up on the web you can spot the primary consumers such as crustaceans, green sea turtles, and corals, these organisms feed off of the producers. Yellowfin tuna, moon jellyfish, and tiger sharks fall into the secondary consumers category, which eat the primary consumers. Although the tiger shark is one of the secondary consumer of the food chain on the right, it is also an apex predator and is on top of the food web besides the barracuda. Lastly, as you may have noticed on the side of the energy web there is an organism called the sea cucumber, this is an example of a decomposer living in the Red Sea reefs. A decomposer breaks down dead organic matter and releases nutrients back to the environment. Producers such as seagrass and algae take these nutrients to make new organic matter and restarting the flow of energy through the web.