Trophic
From Greek 'trophe' meaning nourishment
Relating to feeding and nutrition. Describes the position of organisms in a food chain based on what they eat and what eats them.
Used in the Books
This term appears in 9 chapters:
"... Book 8: Ecosystem Orchestration How to think about entire markets as living systems. Keystone species (companies that hold ecosystems together), trophic cascades (how changes at one level ripple through entire systems), succession, invasive species, island biogeography - these aren't just ecology conc..."
"...em scale: What happens when dozens or hundreds of organizations interact? How do keystone species (TSMC, Stripe, AWS) shape entire ecosystems? How do trophic cascades (wolves → elk → rivers) propagate through business networks? How do pioneer species colonize new markets, and how do ecosystems mature towar..."
"But salmon are the mechanism connecting ocean nutrients to forest growth. Keystone species create trophic cascades: effects that propagate through multiple levels of an ecosystem. Salmon → predators → nutrient dispersal → tree growth → forest canopy → u..."
"For every elephant in a savanna, there are thousands of mice. This relationship underpins ecological pyramids, including biomass pyramids and trophic structure. Allometry of Form: Why Shape Changes with Size Beyond metabolic and physiological scaling, morphological scaling (how body propo..."
"...ment (new sites link to popular existing sites) and produces same robustness/vulnerability trade-offs as biological networks. Food Web Topology: Trophic Structure and Cascades Ecological food webs describe predator-prey relationships: nodes are species, directed edges represent consumption (A eats B)..."
And 4 more chapters...
Biological Context
Trophic levels organize food webs: primary producers (plants), primary consumers (herbivores), secondary consumers (predators), and so on. 'Trophic cascade' refers to effects rippling through these feeding levels.