Q.What will happen if all producers are removed from ecosystem?

Step 1. Producers (autotrophs, chiefly green plants) are the organisms that manufacture organic compounds from simple inorganic substances via photosynthesis — they occupy the first trophic level and are the sole point at which solar energy enters the ecosystem's food chain.

Step 2. Herbivores (primary consumers) depend entirely on producers for their food; if producers were removed, primary consumers would have no food source and would starve, decline and eventually die out or migrate away.

Step 3. Secondary and tertiary consumers depend, in turn, on primary consumers for their food, so the loss of producers would cascade upward through every subsequent trophic level, collapsing the food chain and food web from the base up.

Step 4. Decomposers also depend on dead organic matter from producers and consumers; as the standing biomass of the ecosystem collapsed, the detritus food chain and the nutrient cycles (like the carbon and phosphorus cycles) that depend on plant uptake and decomposition would also be severely disrupted, since producers are what pull inorganic nutrients out of the soil/atmosphere and make them available to the rest of the ecosystem in the first place. …

Trace the consequence of removing the ecosystem's sole energy-entry point (producers) up thro …

• Focusing only on herbivores starving, without extending the reasoning to how secondary/tertiary consumers and decomp …