There cannot be too many links in a single food chain because the animals at the end of the chain would not get enough food and hence, energy to stay alive. Most animals are part of more than one food chain and eat more than one kind of food in order to meet their food and energy requirements. These interconnected food chains form a food web. Food chains can get complicated because animals usually eat a variety of food. Cut enough strips of paper so that each student will have four.
Cut the yarn into pieces that will connect species that interact with each other. Ask students to name some species under each heading. Then demonstrate how to create a food chain, using some of the species listed. Once students understand, have them draw the sun, a producer, a primary consumer, a secondary consumer, and a tertiary consumer on each of their four strips.
These should then be interlocked and glued together to make a chain of species in which one eats the other. They can be hung from the rafters to illustrate the diversity of food chains that exist in nature. Start as with food chains, putting the three headings on the board. Then have each student choose a species from the board, write its name on a card, and draw a picture of it. Then the student should poke a hole near the bottom of the card. Begin the food web by attaching a picture of the sun at one side of the wall.
If you put it on a wall, it can be saved. Have the students who drew producers bring their cards up. Hang these in a horizontal line next to the sun and attach each one to the sun with a piece of yarn to show the connection. Then have students who drew primary consumers bring their cards up.
Hang these in a horizontal line above the producers. One at a time, discuss which producers they would each consume. Attach yarn from each primary consumer to the producers it would consume.
Remember that most animals eat more than one kind of food. The students will begin to see how complex a food web is. Next add the secondary and tertiary consumers in rows above the producers.
Again, discuss the connections between primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers. Next add the scavengers: hyenas can be predators as well as scavengers and vultures. Finally, discuss decomposers—bacteria, fungi and worms that feed on the decaying matter—and their role in the food web. Students should now have a complete understanding of the complexity of the food web.
At right is an example of a food web. All living things need energy to stay alive. This energy comes from the sun. Plants make their food from energy from the sun. Animals get their energy from the food they eat. Animals depend on other living things for food. Some animals eat plants while others eat other animals. This passing of energy from the sun to plants to animals to other animals is called a food chain. Ask students to name all the different animals that are dependent on the one tree.
First demonstrate a food chain, a simple interdependence , by linking the student with the sun card the source of all energy to the student with the grass card to the student with the zebra card to the student with the lion card. Balance is key! Explain that the interactions in a grasslands system are more complicated than this. Have the participants now stand in a circle, out of order i.
Give the ball of string to the person with the sun. Then ask that person to pass the yarn to the person with a card of an organism that the sun supports. A consumer that only eats plants is called a herbivore , and a consumer that only eats other animals is called a carnivore. An omnivore is an animal that eats both plants and animals. Beekeeper Graham Royal talks about the importance of bees to the food chain.
A predator is an animal that hunts and eats other animals, and the prey is the animal that gets eaten by the predator. In the food chain above:. A simple food chain in a broadleaf forest is described. Food chains The table describes some common terms used to describe living things in their environment: Term Description Environment All the conditions that surround a living organism Habitat The place where an organism lives Population All the members of a single species that live in a habitat Community All the populations of different organisms that live together in a habitat Ecosystem A community and the habitat in which organisms live A food chain shows the different species of an organism in an ecosystem , and what eats what.
Producers and consumers A food chain always starts with a producer , an organism that makes food. That is why you can see green plants everywhere when you're walking through the woods. Food Chain : How energy passes through an ecosystem through organisms eating and being eaten. Decomposer : Organisms that break down waste and dead matter. Organisms that can create their own energy from the sun , like plants, are called producers.
Producers are the first level of the food chain. They are autotrophs , which means they can synthesize their own food. They provide energy for all of the consumers in an ecosystem.
Biology Food Chain. Explanations 4 Sylvia Freeman. Food Chain: Producers. Image source: By Sylvia Freeman. Related Lessons. View All Related Lessons. Deena Hauze.
What's a Producer?
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