User:Philcha/Sandbox/Temporary

Taxonomy of a food web[edit]

There may be a better heading for this section. We should look again later.
I think "heuristic concept map" contributes nothing. "heuristic" means at best "trial-and-error", which is easier to understand but still contributes nothing here. "concept map" may be useful as a temporary term when exploring a new topic, but should be replacement by a more specific type of model as the meaning and rules of its nodes and connection firm up - and "food web" is fairly well defined.
The writing should be simpler, especially in the lead, the first section and if possible the start of other sections. The 1st page of "Food web patterns and their consequences" (Pimm etc., 1991) is a good example.
"Food cycle is the antiquated term that is synonymous with food web" looks condescending, as some readers may only have seen "Food cycle". And you should explain why "food web" is now preferred. I note that you've also re-written Food cycle / Food chain. That article says, "A food chain differs from a food web, because the complex polyphagous network of feeding relations are aggregated into trophic species and the chain only follows linear monophagous pathways", which will literally be Greek to most readers, but, if rewritten in plain English, could be a concise, clear explanation of the difference between a food web and a food chain.
Your diagram "A simplified food web illustrating ..." is very good, but I can seen improvements. First, show it larger - Wikipedia:Images#Image_preferences is just a guideline, and here a larger size would make the lettering legible (for fun, see the lead image of Paleontology). I'd removed the circle titled "Nodes containing trophic species", as "trophic species" would need explanation and the rest of the diagram is pretty clear. I'd make the "tropic links" box/arrow bigger, as at present its lettering is smaller that of the rest. And I'd use {{Annotated image}} to make the lettering normal text rather than part of the image, so that: the text can wiki-link, e.g. Decomposers; and users of non-English Wikipedias can change the language of the lettering without changing the image. Examples of {{Annotated image}} include: {{Annotated image/Extinction}}; {{Annotated image/Arthropod head problem}}, which uses lettering overlaying the image (e.g. "A", "x", "Mnd", etc.) and a colour-coded legend; and {{Annotated image/doc/Samples#Setting_defaults_for_annotations}} for a bit of fun. If we agree on using {{Annotated image}}, I'll do the coding and then copy the coding into the File Description page, as I did recently at the main parts of a generalised jumping spider.
Your "biomass energy" links to biofuel, which is irrelevant. And outside of nuclear and high-energy physics, matter and energy are separate phenomena. You might find useful "Oxygenic photosynthesis accounts for virtually all of the production of organic matter from non-organic ingredients. Production is split about evenly between land and marine plants, and phytoplankton are the dominant marine producers" at Evolutionary_history_of_life#The_present, which gives a citation.
Rather than comment phrase-by-phrase, I'll try to rewrite the 1st para more clearly - tell me what you think. We can worry about additiion citations later, they should be easy. I include lots of examples so that, when the article moves into the most technical and abstract parts, general readers can say, "OK, A is an example of X and B is an example of Y".

A food web depicts feeding connections (who eats whom) in an ecological community. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two categories (trophic layers), the autotrophs and the heterotrophs. To maintain their bodies and to reproduce, autotrophs produce organic matter from inorganic substances, including both minerals and gases such as carbon dioxide. These chemical reactions require energy, which mainly comes from the sun and largely by photosynthesis, although a very small amount comes from hydrothermal vents and hot springs. Heterotrophs gain organic matter from autotrophs and from other heterotrophs by a variety of methods, which can be roughly divided into herbivory, carnivory, scavenging and parasitism. Some of the organic matter eaten by heterotrophs, such as sugars, provides energy. Both autotrophs and heterotrophs range from microscopic to many tonnes - from cyanobacteria to giant redwoods, and from viruses and bdellovibrio to blue whales.

The division into autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, scavengers and parasites is not absolute, but shows the main "trade" or guild (ecology) by which each species lives. Many species may or must consume other types of nutrition as well as their main type, for example: carnivorous plants get at least a large part of their nutrition by eating animals, some animals are omnivores (including humans) and many predatory spiders also sip nectar; and many carnivores also scavenge animals that are dead but not too decayed, before bacteria and fungi take when is left. Most multicellular organisms also carry "hangers-on" whose role can range from parasitoids, which generally kill the victim eventually, to mutually beneficial symbiotes, a relationship which in both species benefit. For example malaria, caused by a few type of parasite, can be deadly if untreated, but bees fertilize flowers while sipping nectar and some ants eat plants but also guard them.