BioConcepts

food cycleNahrungskreislauf (ger.)

• A system of natural relationships by which organisms in a community depend on each other for food. (OED)
  category nutrition

  1881

  The Food Cycle. The mineral kingdom is the food supplier to the vegetable kingdom.

  Aveling, E.B. (1881). Biological Discoveries and Problems: 87.

  1923

  Most of the scavenging animals [in the Arctic] live on decaying plants, and are, therefore, practically equivalent to herbivores in the food cycle.

  Summerhayes, V.S. & Elton, C. (1923). Bear Island. J. Ecol. 11, 216-33: 231.

  1926

  Der Nahrungskreislauf im Wasser

  Thienemann, A. (1926). Der Nahrungskreislauf im Wasser. Verh. Deutsch. Zool. Ges. 31, 29-79.

  1927

  The herbivores are usually preyed upon by carnivores, which get the energy of the sunlight at third-hand, and these again may be preyed upon by other carnivores, and so on, until we reach an animal which has no enemies, and which forms, as it were, a terminus in this food-cycle. There are, in fact, chains of animals linked together by food, and all dependent on the long run upon plants. We refer to these as "food-chains," and to all the food-chains in a community as "food-cycle."

  Elton, C. (1927). Animal Ecology: 56.

  1941

  food-cycle dynamics

  Lindeman, R.L. (1941). Seasonal food-cycle dynamics in a senescent lake. Amer. Midl. Nat. 26, 636-73.