The concept of trophic level was developed by Raymond Lindeman (1942), based on the terminology of August Thienemann(1926): "producers", "consumers" and "reducers" (modified to "decomposers" by

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The three basic ways in which organisms get food are as producers, consumers, and decomposers.
• Producers (autotrophs) are typically plants or algae. Plants and algae do not usually eat other organisms, but pull nutrients from the soil or

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In general, each trophic level relates to the one below it by absorbing some of the energy it consumes, and in this way can be regarded as resting on, or supported by, the next lower trophic

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Food webs largely define ecosystems, and the trophic levels define the position of organisms within the webs. But these trophic levels are not

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In fisheries, the mean trophic level for the fisheries catch across an entire area or ecosystem is calculated for year y as:
where is

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Since biomass transfer efficienciesare only about 10%, it follows that the rate of biological production is much greater at lower trophic levels than it is at higher levels. Fisheries catch, at least, to begin with, will tend to increase as the trophic level declines. At this point

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Both the number of trophic levels and the complexity of relationships between them evolve as life diversifies through time, the exception being

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