Next are the secondary consumers, which eat primary consumers. Some other examples of primary consumers are white-tailed deer that forage on prairie grasses, and zooplankton that eat microscopic algae in the water. For example, a grasshopper living in the Everglades is a primary consumer. They eat primary producers-plants or algae-and nothing else. Primary consumers make up the second trophic level. Scientists distinguish between several kinds of consumers. To get energy, they eat plants or other animals, while some eat both. Unlike producers, they cannot make their own food. Consumers constitute the upper trophic levels. Through a process called photosynthesis, producers capture energy from the sun and use it to create simple organic molecules, which they use for food. Primary producers-plants, algae, and bacteria-make up the base of the pyramid, the first trophic level. These interactions can be represented by what scientists call a trophic pyramid. Within every ecosystem, organisms interact to move energy around in predictable ways. These animals are quite different from one another and live in different ways, but they have something in common: In this ecosystem, they are all consumers. A raccoon (Procyon lotor) digs in the mud for freshwater mussels. A grasshopper ( Brachystola magna) chews on an aster leaf. A great egret (Ardea alba) stalks fish in the shallows. On a sawgrass prairie in the Florida Everglades, an alligator ( Alligator mississippiensis) lazes on the bank of a slow-moving water channel.
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