This concept can be called by different names: trophic chain, food chain , food chain, ecological connections - the essence of this does not change. Climatic zones are changing, flora and fauna are changing, but the meaning remains the same - today you eat food, and tomorrow you yourself are food.
Tundra Features
The natural zone, located between the Arctic and taiga, is very scarce on flora and fauna. Not as deserted as the Arctic, but one should not even compare with warmer climatic zones. The soil is marshy and rocky, only mosses with lichens grow on such soil, and even then it is not everywhere, permafrost does not allow it. Shrubs begin closer to the taiga lands, and sometimes you can even find dwarf willow or birch. The fauna is also not very widely represented, and be sure to almost all representatives of the animal world they add the adjective “polar”, a hare or a wolf, a polar fox or a bear, and even an owl. Deer, however, are just northern.
Food chain
Below is a diagram of the power circuit characteristic of the tundra. The photo demonstrates it clearly.
It does not include all animals, only the most common. If you do not pay attention to lemmings and musky bulls, which are rare for these places , then the scheme characteristic of the tundra and food chain is as follows. Mosses and lichens are eaten by herbivores: polar hares and reindeer. This does not raise questions. The peculiarity that the scheme characteristic of the tundra possesses is the food chain: some predators (arctic foxes and bears), for lack of constant animal nutrition, eat lichens with mosses themselves.
Below is a photo. It is representative, without which the power circuit diagram characteristic of the tundra would not have looked like this. It is a reindeer in its natural habitat in summer.
Winter in the tundra is long and harsh. Summer is very short, accommodates spring with blooming shrubs and green lichens and autumn. The rest is simple. The scheme characteristic of the tundra, the food chain is similar to the others: smaller herbivores (polar hares, the same lemmings) are eaten by small polar predators - owls, arctic foxes or wolves. Larger herbivores (reindeer and occasionally found musk oxen) are eaten by wolves and polar bears.
The chain has several vertices. These are all predators that do not hunt each other, but practically do not intersect in the natural environment: polar owl, arctic fox, wolf. In the photo below, a predator is presented, with which the scheme characteristic of the tundra, the food chain looks complete. It is a polar polar bear in a natural habitat.
Instead of a conclusion
The filling of the tundra with flora and fauna is slightly more numerous than described in the article. These are insects that swarm swamps in the warm season. Other birds are present, except for owls, which feed on these insects. Animals from other natural zones come here. But all this does not affect the main food chain characteristic of the tundra. The main links in the chain are now known to you.