🧬 By nourishment 🌱 By food chains

trophically

8.8

In a way that shows who eats who in an ecosystem

adverb
/ˈtroʊfɪkli/

Specialized

: tróficamente

Herring and sand lance apparently exploit similar prey and fill similar niches trophically.

Examples

The other four fish that may co-occur with lake trout and/or arctic char are trophically distinct.

Academic text (1999)
They are relatively large regions on the order of 200,000 km or greater, characterized by distinct bathymetry, hydrography, productivity, and trophically dependent populations.

Academic text (2005)
-- Crait JR, Ben-David M. 2007. Effects of river otter activity on terrestrial plants in trophically altered Yellowstone Lake. Ecology 88: 1040-1052.

Academic text (2009)
LMEs are "relatively large regions on the order of 200,000 km or greater, characterized by distinct: (1) bathymetry, (2) hydrography, (3) productivity, and (4) trophically dependent populations" (www.lme.noaa.gov/Portal/).

Academic text (2007)
In a trophically balanced ecosystem, the plants and animals depend on each other for survival.
The study examined how predator and prey species interact trophically within the food web.
Understanding trophically related species helps ecologists predict changes in ecosystem dynamics.

Synonyms

dietarily

vstrophically

1 6.5

In a way that relates to a person's diet and eating habits

focuses on feeding relationships and nutrition across whole ecosystems

Surface Forms

trophically positive

Morphology

trophically = trophic (transparent) = trophic + ally

Regular adverbial derivation from the adjective 'trophic' using the productive suffix '-ally'; the meaning 'in a trophic/nutritional manner' is directly predictable, though the term is technical.

Etymology

The word trophically comes from the Greek root troph- meaning 'nourish' or 'feed'. So when species are trophically linked, they are connected by who eats whom in a food chain or food web.