Lably
Skip to content

Consumer–resource interactions

Dietary interactions between species

  • 2 min read
  • 1 chapter

Related on Lably

Through Food chain, Predation and Parasitism

Lab · Class 3–10Food Chains ExplorerLab · Class 8–10Ecosystems & Food WebsLab · Class 8–12Ecosystem DynamicsLab · Class 8–10Forests: Our Lifeline

Classification of consumer types

The standard categorization

Various terms have arisen to define consumers by what they eat, such as meat-eating carnivores, fish-eating piscivores, insect-eating insectivores, plant-eating herbivores, seed-eating granivores, and fruit-eating frugivores and omnivores are meat eaters and plant eaters. An extensive classification of consumer categories based on a list of feeding behaviors exists.

The Getz categorization

Another way of categorizing consumers, proposed by South African American ecologist Wayne Getz, is based on a biomass transformation web (BTW) formulation that organizes resources into five components: live and dead animal, live and dead plant, and particulate matter (such as a composted carcass or rotting plant matter). It also distinguishes between consumers that gather their resources by moving across landscapes from those that mine their resources by becoming sessile once they have located a stock of resources large enough for them to feed on during completion of a full life history stage.

In Getz's scheme, words for miners are of Greek etymology and words for gatherers are of Latin etymology. Thus a bestivore, such as a cat, preys on live animals (Latin: bestia=animal) while a sarcophage, such as a botfly larva mines live flesh and a zontanophage (Greek: zontanos=alive), such as a leaf miner, mines live plant material. A carcasivore (Latin: carcasium=carcass), such as white-backed vulture, scavenge animal carcasses while a necrophage (Greek: nekros=dead body), such as a blowfly, mines dead flesh. Victivores (Latin: victus=living) gather live plant material and thus include frugivores, nectivores, graminivores, granivores and folivores as subcategories. Lectivores, such as many termites, gather dead plant material (Latin: lectus=bed which is the root of the word litter, as in leaf-litter) and thanatophages (Greek: thanatos=death), such as pillbugs mine piles of dead plant material. Carnivore and herbivore are generic multigroup categories for gathers respectively of animal and plant material, irrespective of whether live or dead. Croppers, scavengers, and detritivores are gatherers respectively of live, dead, and particulate material. Parasites, saprophages, and decomposers are miners respectively of live, dead, and particulate material.

Specialist totivores (gatherers)

Specialist olophages (miners)

More in Ecology

ExtinctionTermination of a species' lineageBiodiversityVariety and variability of life formsEcosystemCommunity of living organisms together with the nonliving components of their environmentHabitatType of environment in which an organism livesEcologyStudy of organisms and their environmentInvasive speciesIntroduced species that harms its new environment