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Mr McCondichie

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Energy in Ecosystems

Starter

  1. What can you catch but not throw?
  2. What jumps when it walks and sits when it stands?
  3. What has a head like a cat, feet like a cat, a tail like a cat but isn't a cat?

Lesson 5 - Food Chains and Food Webs

Learning Intentions:

Interactions of living things

Green Plants make their own food using energy from the sun using the process of Photosynthesis.

Animals cannot make their own food and so need to eat plants or other animals to get energy.

A green plant produces its own food using energy from the sun so it is called a producer




An animal that eats (or consumes) the plant or another animal is a consumer




If an animal eats plants it is called a herbivore -






If an animal eats other animals (meat) it is called a carnivore -






If an animal eats both it is an omnivore -







We show this using a food chain

The arrows show the direction of energy flow

grass→sheep→wolf

from grass to sheep to wolf

Making Food Chains

Read this passage and in your jotter create two food chains from it:

Earthworms live in burrows and eat plant roots and leaves.

Earthworms provide food for frogs.

Insects, which feed off the nectar in flowers also provide food for frogs.

Label the organisms in your food chains using the terms below. Some animals may have more than one label.

  1. producer
  2. consumer
  3. herbivore
  4. carnivore
  5. omnivore

Food Webbs

In nature things are not usually that simple. Animals eat more than one thing.

How many plants and animals made up your last meal?

With all the information about what eats what we can make a FOOD WEB

Again the way the energy flows is shown by the arrows.

Use your deck of cards to create a food web.

Food chains and food webs fill in the blanks on your handout

A green plant produces its own food using energy from the sun so its called a p_______

An animal that eats (or consumes) the plant or another animal is a c_______

A herbivore eats p_____

A carnivore eats a______

An omnivore eats p_____ and a______

Extension - Disturbing a food web

If you disturb a food web by removing or adding even one species, it can affect several other organisms in the same food web.

Remove one of the species from the food web you have made......

Questions:

  1. What effect does that have on everything else?
  2. Would anything increase in number?
  3. Would anything decrease?