What is the food chain in a cave?

What is the food chain in a cave?

The Cave Food Chain All life depends on sunlight, even in the darkest areas of a cave. No green plants grow here because they need light for photosynthesis. On the surface, green plants make food. Cave animals must depend on occasional floods to wash leaves, twigs and plant debris into the cave.

What is the ecosystem of a cave?

Cave ecosystems are characterized by lack of light and, as a result, dependence on connectivity to the surface or internal microbial production for energy supply. Caves are actually part of a larger karst ecosystem that is the entire drainage basin through which moves water, energy and matter.

Are there any plants that grow in caves?

Plants such as saxifrage, wood sorrel, herb Robert, ivy, maidenhair spleenwort, brittle bladder-ferns, hart’s tongue ferns and dog violet grow at the threshold of caves, near the entrance. They can be found growing in clumps inside the entrance of caves, such as the Yangzi cave.

What is a decomposer in the caves?

Leaves and other plant litter blows in from plants outside the cave and support de- composers. Many of these decomposers are also found outside of caves, such as small millipedes, terrestrial isopods (also known as pill bugs or roly-polies), terres- trial snails, earthworms, cave crickets, and other insects.

What are biotic factors in a cave?

Biotic factors of caves include bugs, worms, spiders, possibly fish and most commonly, bats.

Do all caves have bats?

It is also true that most caves might have at least a few bats, but only a few caves large huge numbers of the only flying mammals. Your tour cave just might not have that many bats living within it. These favorite caves or cave rooms vary species by species.

Do fungi grow in caves?

Fungi grow everywhere, and they do not need light, so growing inside a cave does not require any adaption. They grow in the top soil and they grow in cave clay, especially if there is a piece of wood, which most likely brought the spores with it into the cave.

What is cave cultivation?

Cave cultivation:  Small tunnels are made in rocky areas and mushroom forms can be established.  Abandoned mines can be used to develop mushroom farms.

Do food chains exist in cave ecosystems?

When food energy moves from the sun to a plant, to an animal, to another animal, that is a food chain. The fact that animals live in caves at all, proves that caves are not isolated from the surface. On the surface, all food chains start with green plants, which make food from sunlight.

Is a cave abiotic or biotic?

The abiotic factors of caves are rocks, water, stalactite, dirt, limestone and sand. Any one of these can be found in any cave, depending on the caves location.

Is producers abiotic or biotic?

Within an ecosystem, there are many interactive food chains which create a food web. Both abiotic and biotic factors are involved in food webs. Biotic Factors At the bottom of a food web are producers, or autotrophs, which produce their own food through photosynthesis, such as trees and shrubs.

How does the biology of a cave work?

How Cave Biology Works. As you probably learned in biology class, all life depends on sunlight — a process known as photosynthesis. This is true even for the deepest, darkest part of a cave, otherwise known as the dark zone. We know that no green plants can grow in the dark zone.

How are plants able to grow in caves?

Plants need light. To grow, plant use a process called photosynthesis. This process combines Carbon dioxide and water from the soil. To make the system work a plant requires energy from sunlight that is picked up by a green pigment on leaves called chlorophyll. After knowing this, it is hard to imagine any kind of plant able to grow inside a cave.

How is food able to get into a cave?

The answer is simple — through a food chain, just like everything else on our planet. Let’s take a closer look at that chain. One way for food to get into a cave is through natural weather events like a flood. Excess rainwater washes leaves, twigs and plants into a cave, providing munchies for insects and other animals.

What kind of organisms live in a cave?

The hollow space that forms a cave can contain parts called corridors, which are narrow passageways, as well as chambers. Caves exist all over the world, and people who study caves are referred to as speleologists, while organisms that live in a cave are known as troglobionts.