A network of interconnected food chains is called a food web.

食物链之间相互交错、互相影响，构成生物网。

So let's take the food web of a woodland environment as an example.

让我们以林地环境中的食物网为例。

Without them, we would have no flowering plants, which would harm the food web that supports important animals.

如果没有它们，我们就不会有开花的植物，这将会损害支持重要动物的食物网。

This shift matters, Hammerschlag says, because tiger sharks are apex predators, and where they go influences the food web beneath them.

哈默施拉格表示，这种转变很重要，因为虎鲨是食物链顶端的掠食者，它们的去向会影响它们下面的食物网。

And they also, and perhaps most pertinently from the human point of view, found evidence for one other part of such a food web: the decomposers.

分解者。

They break down all other members of the ecosystem that have died and return their nutrients to the soil, where they'll be taken up by plants and reenter the food web once again.

它们分解了所有其他已经死亡的生态系统成员，并将它们的营养物质返回到土壤中，在那里它们将被植物吸收，并再次进入食物网。