Ecology also teaches that all life on earth can be viewed as a competit…

Ecology also teaches that all life on earth can be viewed as a competition among species for the solar energy captured by green plants and stored in the form of complex carbon molecules. A food chain is a system for passing those calories on to species that lack the plant’s unique ability to synthesize them from sunlight.

Excerpt from The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan