A food web is a conceptual and graphical representation of trophic interactions within an ecological community, depicting how energy and biomass move through interconnected food chains. Nodes in a food web represent species or trophic groups, while links denote predation, herbivory, or other consumer–resource relationships. Food web analysis quantifies properties such as connectance, trophic levels, modularity, and stability, and is central to understanding ecosystem structure, dynamics, and resilience. It provides a framework for modeling top-down and bottom-up controls, indirect effects (e.g., trophic cascades), and responses of communities to perturbations such as species extinctions, invasions, and environmental change.
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