The Food Chain

[Pearty]

What is the lowest living organism on the food chain?

[wrighty1980]

Sunlight is the only common source for all food chains. It is processed by unicellular organisms (who are too numerous to mention although algae is a good example).

[andy hughes]

At school we were always taught that the aomeba was the simplist form of life - being just one cell.

[archbishop]

Basildon Man.

[Richard Head]

In my house it's me

[Headtime]

conservatives

[TommyC]

Apparently nobody wants to provide the correct sensible answer, so I will. Plankton.

[New Forester]

Hi - No, I'm afraid "plankton" is not the answer. That's small animals and plants floating in water -- the animals will be one or more links up the chain. There's a confusion here between "low" organisms, meaning simple ones, and organisms low down in the food chain. So the answer is actually plants -- whether single-celled plankton, lettuces or huge trees. They take light energy, carbon dioxide and water, and make sugars and other useful things. Plants are eaten by animals, and also by decomposing fungi, bacteria etc, all the way up the food chain. A few bacteria are able to get energy from other sources than light, such as chemicals in the "black smoker" deep-ocean hot springs. These support a special chemical-energy based food-chain.