1. Food Chains & Webs
Observing the Ecosystem

2. Key Objectives:
 The student will:
– Identify a food chain, what
makes up a food chain and
how it transfers energy

3. Key Objectives:
 The student will:
– Identify how food chains
combine and interact with
each other to create food
webs.

4. Key Objectives:
 The student will:
– Describe a simple food chain and
food web
– Share the effects and
consequences if one link of
strand of a food chain or food
web disappears

5. Key Terms
 Food Chain
 Food Web
 Energy Pyramid
 Producer
 Primary
Consumer
 Secondary
Consumer
 Decomposer
 Herbivore
 Carnivore
 Omnivore

6. Food Chain
 The food chain is a straight line
structure or linear model that
shows how each living thing gets
its food.
 It begins at the lowest level and
works to the highest levels

7. Food Chain

8. Food Web
 A matrix of interrelated food
chains in an ecological
community.

9. Food Web

10. Producer(s)
 The green plants that use chlorophyll,
water, light energy and Carbon
Dioxide to create sugars.

11. Primary Consumers
 These are called HERBIVORES,
That means that they eat the
green plants
– Cow
– Grasshopper

12. Secondary Consumer(s)
 The first level of secondary
consumers are called
CARNIVORES, that means that
they eat meat (other animals) for
energy
– Dog
– Cat

13. Secondary Consumer
 The second level of secondary
consumers are called
OMNIVORES, that means that
they eat meat (plants and other
animals) for energy
– Grizzly Bear
– Human

14. Decomposer(s)
 This part of the food chain
consists of fungi and microbes
that break down the dead
secondary consumers returning
the nutrients to the soil

15. Energy Pyramid
 The graphical representation of
the nutrition levels by which the
incoming solar energy is
transferred into an ecosystem.

16. Energy Pyramid

17. Lab Time
Now it is time to introduce
the new lab.
Please open your Green lab
guides to pages50 and 51
Read the introduction
silently as I read it aloud

18. Essential Learnings
 The food chain begins with
producers followed by the
primary then secondary and
third-level consumers and finally
decomposers return nutrients to
the earth

19. Essential Learnings
 When one link of a food chain is
removed, unless another source
of food is found, the results are
catastrophic down the chain and
a species could become extinct

20. Essential Learnings
 The food web is more intricate
than a food chain. It shows an
interrelation of food chains.

21. Essential Learnings
 When one link of a food chain is
broken or the population
disappears, the link below it
explodes in population while the
link above it declines.

22. Essential Learnings
 When one population increases
without a check, that link will eat
all the food available and can
eventually starve itself out.

23. Essential Learnings
 The food chain/web is a delicate
cycle of life. If it is permanently
disturbed/disrupted it could
change life on earth forever

24. Essential Learnings
 Humans have a responsibility to
keep the earth going for further
generations of beings, animals
and plants.
 We need to protect our
environment so not to disrupt
the delicate circle of life.