Food webs and trophic levels for 9th grade biology

11-28-16 This is a food chain. Can you see what eats what?

Draw this Draw this food food chain in chain in your your notebooknotebook

bee

snake

frog

dragonfly

flower

11-28-16

Agenda

1. Ecology Lesson

Objective

• Create a food web and explain how energy moves through it

As always dear students…

• Key concepts are underlined

• Vocabulary terms are in green

Food Chains and Food Webs

• Organisms get Organisms get their energy from their energy from the food they eatthe food they eat

• Plants get their energy from the sunPlants get their energy from the sun

• They use that energy to make their own food.

• A food chain is a pathway that tells us what eats what

• Food chains are over-simplified models of nature

• A food web shows how several food chains overlap and connect to each other

All food webs start with producers (aka autotrophs)

• Organisms that must eat other organisms to survive are called consumers (aka heterotrophs)

There are different types of consumers

• Herbivores – eat only plants

• Carnivores – eat only the flesh of other organisms

• Omnivores – eat both plants and animals

• Detritivores – eat waste or dead organisms like dead animals, fallen leaves, poo

• Organisms that break down the bodies of dead plants and animals are called decomposers

• Mostly bacteria and fungi

Quick Check

Older partner• Give an example of a

producer, an herbivore, and a carnivore from a grassland ecosystem

Younger partner• Give an example of a

producer, an herbivore, and an omnivore from a forest ecosystem

• The first consumers in a food web are called the PRIMARY CONSUMERS– They eat the

producers• The second

consumers in a food web are the SECONDARY CONSUMERS– They eat the

animals that ate the plants

• The third consumers are the TERTIARY CONSUMERS, and so on

Directions for Food Web Activity

1. This is an individual assignment.2. The organisms in the food web must be must be

drawn and their names writtendrawn and their names written beneath them.

3. Each organism is drawn only once in the food web.

4. The questions need to be answered in complete sentences on the back of the food web diagram.

Did you “get it”?

• Circle the producer on your food web.

• Put a box around one of the primary consumers on your food web.

• Put a triangle around one of the secondary consumers on your food web.

• Write what the arrows show in the top right corner of your paper.