building a food web assignment answer key

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Lesson 4 - gorongosa's food webs.

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After examining the animals in the WildCam photos, one question you may have is how do these animals interact? One way to understand how animal species interact in an ecosystem is to determine what eats what. Researchers create food chains and food webs to understand populations at different trophic levels and determine the health and stability of the ecosystem as a whole. Human-caused and natural disturbances can disrupt these interactions and reduce stability.

In this lesson, you will learn about how food webs are constructed and trophic levels in an ecological community. You will then use animals that you identify in WildCam Gorongosa to construct food chains and food webs, and then study the impacts of disturbances. Complete the assignments below, then click “Next” to move on to lesson five.

Assignments • Complete the “Food Webs Activity: Building a Food Chain” worksheet • Complete the “Food Webs Activity: Building a Food Web” worksheet • Complete the “Food Webs Activity: Food Webs and Disturbances” worksheet

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Estimated Class Time for the Engagement: 20-30 minutes

EXPLORATION

This student-centered station lab is set up so students can begin to explore food webs. Four of the stations are considered input stations where students are learning new information about food webs, and four of the stations are output stations where students will be demonstrating their mastery of the input stations.  Each of the stations is differentiated to challenge students using a different learning style.  You can read more about how I set up the station labs here .

EXPLORE IT!

WATCH IT!

At this station, students will be watching a 4-minute video describing how wolves change rivers. Students will then answer questions related to the video and record their answers on their lab station sheet. For example, name 2 impacts the wolves had on the deer population at Yellowstone, how did the re-introduction impact tree populations, and how wolves impacted the flow of rivers in Yellowstone.

RESEARCH IT!

READ IT!

This station will provide students with a one page reading about food webs. In the reading students will discover what the term ecology means and methods of ecological interdependence. Students will also learn from the reading that the many relationships that occur in an ecosystem that allows organisms to thrive an survive. There are 4 follow-up questions that the students will answer to show reading comprehension of the subject.

ASSESS IT!

WRITE IT!

Students who can answer open-ended questions about the lab truly understand the concepts that are being taught.  At this station, the students will be answering three questions like describing the impact of removing an organism from a food web, describe the flow of energy in a marine food web, and explain the reason why humans are dependent on a healthy ecosystem.

ILLUSTRATE IT!

Your visual students will love this station.  Students will be creating a sample food web from an ecosystem they would find at a nearby park. Students will include the Sun, at least 7 organisms and arrows depicting the flow of energy.

ORGANIZE IT!

The organize it station allows your students to place organisms on a food web template. The marine food web contains 9 cards that students will place in the correct order showing the correct flow of energy.

Estimated Class Time for the Exploration: 1-2, 45 minute class periods

EXPLANATION

ELABORATION

The final piece of the 5E model is to evaluate student comprehension.  Included in every 5E lesson is a homework assignment, assessment, and modified assessment.  Research has shown that homework needs to be meaningful and applicable to real-world activities in order to be effective.  When possible, I like to give open-ended assessments to truly gauge the student’s comprehension.

Estimated Class Time for the Elaboration: 1, 45 minute class period

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Food web worksheets.

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Energy Pyramid Concepts

• Food Chain - feed from lower trophic level.
• Food Web - multiple food chains.
• Energy Pyramid - energy transfer, 10%, energy efficiency, biomass.
• Trophic Levels - producers, consumers, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, detritivores, decomposers.

Lessons Organized by NGSS Standard

• LS1 From Molecules to Organisms
• LS2 Ecosystems
• LS3 Heredity
• LS4 Biological Evolution

Food Web II

Identify the:

1. Producers - plants 2. Primary Consumers - squirrel, grasshopper, rabbit, mouse 3. Secondary Consumers - frog, mouse, fox, snake, owl 4. Tertiary Consumers - snake, owl, fox. There is some overlap, animals can be both depending on what they are eating at the time. When snake eats the rabbit, it is a secondary consumer. When the snake eats the frog, then it is a tertiary consumer.

5. Herbivores - grasshopper, squirrel, rabbit 6. Carnivores - frog, snake, owl, fox 7. Omnivores - mouse 8. What elements are missing from this food web? decomposers, sun

On the back, Construct a Food web using the following animals. This ecosystem represents a farm area. The corn is the main source of food for many of the herbivores in the area. You do not have to draw pictures, you can just use the animal names and draw arrows between them.

SNAKE, CORN , CATERPILLAR, DEER, CROW, MOUSE, COUGAR, SQUIRREL, MICROORGANISMS (decomposers)

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Food Web Analysis Worksheet

Food webs and food chains are a basic, fundamental concept of ecology that nearly every student learns once or twice. However, there is a lot more behind the food web than simply "who eats who". This worksheet will take students through a portion of the complex food web found at Yellowstone National Park and have them work with concepts such as trophic level (producer - primary consumer - secondary consumer - tertiary consumer), energy flow, the Ten percent rule, decomposers, and keystone species.

All artwork in this worksheet was hand-drawn on commission by Brittany Breaux , an exceptionally-talented former student of mine.

Essential concepts: Food web, food chain, trophic level, producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer, decomposers, Ten percent rule, keystone species.

Answer Key: Available as part of a environmental science instructor resources subscription .

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Food Chains and Webs Bundle

Planning your food chains and food webs lesson? Let me do it for you, with these ready to use activities! Your students will love the drag & drop to build a food web activity, and the Doodle Notes are an amazing review.

Description

A fun and ready to use lesson for food chains and food webs!

My interactive Google Slides are bright and use custom graphics and real life photographs to bring ecology to life for your students.

These activities are varied, with students building their own food chain and food web, matching keywords to definitions, completing a decomposer fact file, and much more! Your students will be active and engaged in their learning. 

Once students have completed the slides, the Doodle Notes are a perfect review activity. They can also be used for sub plans, homework assignments, and test prep. Then you can use the Google Forms Quiz to easily check student progress – it is self-grading, so there is no extra work for you.

All answers are included, along with handy teacher guides so you know how to use these activities in your classroom.

My Food Chains and Food Webs Lesson Bundle includes:

• fill-in-the-blanks
• drag and drop to create a food chain and food web
• follow-up questions
• reading passage of key information
• research task on the Venus flytraps
• Answer Slides: animated for going through with the whole class, or you can set them on Google Classroom for students to check and correct their own work
• Google Forms Quiz : a self-grading 11 point quiz to let you easily check student progress. An image of a food web is used to support some of the questions
• Doodle Notes: 2 pages of engaging Doodle Notes, perfect for reviewing content – there are 4 versions, including scaffolded and color versions, plus a completed example & answer key presentation
• Teacher Guidance: how to assign and use each resource

Content covered:

• Creating and analyzing food chains and food webs
• Keywords: autotroph, heterotroph, producer, consumer, decomposer, predator, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, apex predator
• Energy pyramids – structure, trophic levels, 10% energy transfer rule
• How energy is lost from one trophic level to the next
• Decomposers – examples and their importance in an ecosystem
• Impact of species loss on an ecosystem

How do I use this bundle of resources?

• After checkout, you can immediately download your resources
• You’ll click the links in the PDF to make copies of the Google Slides and Quiz for your own Google Drive
• Simply assign these to your students on Google Classroom
• You’ll open the Doodle Notes ZIP file to see all of the versions of the Doodle Notes
• Pick which version you want students to complete and print one set for each student

And that’s it – your lesson prep is done!

Please note: This resource is a digital download – no physical product will be shipped. To assign the Google Slides and Quiz, you need a Google Classroom. Your students need their own device and an internet connection. There are links to YouTube videos – please ensure YouTube is not restricted by your school. Most clipart and questions are secured and cannot be edited. The answers can be edited. My Doodle Notes are secure PDF files and are not editable. Doodle Notes is a trademarked term used with permission. Please visit doodlenotes.org  for more info. 

You’re tired, stressed and have lesson prep to do for tomorrow. You deserve a break. Get this ready-to-use lesson and take the evening off for yourself.

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Food chains and food webs

• (Choice A)   Sea gull - tertiary consumer A Sea gull - tertiary consumer
• (Choice B)   Krill - producer B Krill - producer
• (Choice C)   Mackerel - primary consumer C Mackerel - primary consumer
• (Choice D)   Phytoplankton - secondary consumer D Phytoplankton - secondary consumer

Food Webs - Review Worksheet {Editable}

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Build a Food Web Game

On the Who Eats Who Handout are all the species in a food web and what they eat. You can hand this out to your students or have them research their own species feeding habits to make this activity an interdisciplinary with ELA components. Students can each be responsible for one part of the food web.

To make this into a game…

• Put a roll of tape on the back of each animal picture and stick them to a student’s desk.
• Place the sun on the board and talk about how the sun supplies the energy for producers to grow. You can use the lecture from “ Food Web Lecture with Producer-Consumer-Decomposer Chart” to teach this lesson.
• Call for all producers.
• Call for all primary consumers or herbivores.
• Call for all secondary consumers or omnivores.
• Call for all tertiary consumers or carnivores.
• Call for all decomposers.
• When everyone has taped their species to the board, point out how the energy flows through a food web.
• Leave your food web up for a few days and talk about different aspects of it, study the animals in more depth, talk about local food webs versus food webs on an African Savannah or Amazon Rainforest.
• Print out food web graphics below (or in pdf) to use in your project.

• crops, berries, trees, grasses

Primary Consumers - Herbivores

• mouse — grass, plants, mushrooms, berries, tree buds
• deer — grass, plants, mushrooms, berries, crops, trees
• grasshopper — grass, plants, berries, crops, trees
• rabbit — grass, plants, mushrooms, berries, tree buds
• chipmunk — grass, plants, mushrooms, berries, nuts and cones
• squirrel — grass, plants, mushrooms, berries, nuts and cones

Secondary Consumers - Omnivores

• bullfrog — grasshopper, earthworms, small fish
• snake — mouse, grasshopper
• raccoon — mushrooms, crops, mouse, bird eggs, berries, nuts and cones

Tertiary Consumers – Carnivores

• weasel — mouse, grasshopper, rabbit, chipmunk. squirrel
• bear — mushrooms, fish, berries, nuts, mouse, grasshopper, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel
• fox — bird eggs, berries, nuts, mouse, grasshopper, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel
• eagle — mouse, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel, snake, small raccoon, baby weasel
• hawk — mouse, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel, snake, small raccoon, baby weasel
• owl — mice, grasshopper, rabbit
• mountain lion - mouse, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel, snake, raccoon, weasel
• coyote — mouse, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel, snake, small raccoon, baby weasel
• bobcat — mouse, rabbit, chipmunk, squirrel, snake, raccoon, weasel

Decomposers

• Indian pipes — everything once they are dead
• mushrooms — everything once they are dead

PDF Version for Downloading

Use teacher login to show answer keys or other teacher-only items., citing research references.

When you research information you must cite the reference. Citing for websites is different from citing from books, magazines and periodicals. The style of citing shown here is from the MLA Style Citations (Modern Language Association).

When citing a WEBSITE the general format is as follows. Author Last Name, First Name(s). "Title: Subtitle of Part of Web Page, if appropriate." Title: Subtitle: Section of Page if appropriate. Sponsoring/Publishing Agency, If Given. Additional significant descriptive information. Date of Electronic Publication or other Date, such as Last Updated. Day Month Year of access < URL >.

Here is an example of citing this page:

Amsel, Sheri. "Build a Food Web Game " Exploring Nature Educational Resource ©2005-2024. April 7, 2024 < http://www.exploringnature.org/db/view/Build-a-Food-Web-Game- >

Exploringnature.org has more than 2,000 illustrated animals. Read about them, color them, label them, learn to draw them.

FREE K-12 standards-aligned STEM

curriculum for educators everywhere!

Find more at TeachEngineering.org .

• TeachEngineering
• Got Energy? Spinning a Food Web

Hands-on Activity Got Energy? Spinning a Food Web

Grade Level: 4 (3-5)

Time Required: 45 minutes

Expendable Cost/Group: US $1.00

Group Size: 8

Activity Dependency: None

Subject Areas: Biology, Life Science, Science and Technology

NGSS Performance Expectations:

Curriculum in this Unit Units serve as guides to a particular content or subject area. Nested under units are lessons (in purple) and hands-on activities (in blue). Note that not all lessons and activities will exist under a unit, and instead may exist as "standalone" curriculum.

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Engineering connection, learning objectives, materials list, worksheets and attachments, more curriculum like this, introduction/motivation, vocabulary/definitions, troubleshooting tips, activity extensions, activity scaling, user comments & tips.

Understanding energy flow and transfer helps many engineers do their jobs. Some engineers improve energy efficiency and develop viable renewable energy sources. Other engineers design and develop new technologies that improve food and energy production, or measure, model or predict the climate and weather energy cycles. Some engineers design and develop human-created environments, such as biodomes and space stations. Other engineers use their understanding of the natural energy cycles and food webs as they work to minimize the impact on ecosystems of a new dam or river re-routing.

After this lesson, students should be able to:

• Compare and contrast producers and consumers in a food chain or food web.
• Diagram the flow of energy through simple food chains and food webs.
• Explain how engineers use knowledge of energy flow through food chains and webs to work with new energy sources, technologies and designed environments.

Educational Standards Each TeachEngineering lesson or activity is correlated to one or more K-12 science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) educational standards. All 100,000+ K-12 STEM standards covered in TeachEngineering are collected, maintained and packaged by the Achievement Standards Network (ASN) , a project of D2L (www.achievementstandards.org). In the ASN, standards are hierarchically structured: first by source; e.g. , by state; within source by type; e.g. , science or mathematics; within type by subtype, then by grade, etc .

Ngss: next generation science standards - science, international technology and engineering educators association - technology.

View aligned curriculum

Do you agree with this alignment? Thanks for your feedback!

State Standards

Colorado - science.

Each group needs:

• 1 piece of cardboard or construction paper
• 1 or 2 nature or wildlife magazines (such as National Geographic, Natural History, Ranger Rick, etc.)

For the entire class to share:

• several balls of string or yarn (can be re-used for future projects)

In your own words, can you explain what makes an environment or an ecosystem ? (Key points: An environment is the surrounding area that an organism lives in, including the air, water, food and energy for that organism to survive. An ecosystem is a whole working unit that includes an area's living organisms and nonliving environmental conditions, linked by nutrient and energy cycles.) How is the environment you live in different from another animal's, say a frog or a deer? How are these environments the same? (Make a T-chart on the board or overhead projector to list environment similarities and differences.) What keeps an environment in motion? What fuels the animals and plants that live within these ecosystems? That's right, nutrients, water and energy!

Why do we eat breakfast, lunch, dinner (and maybe a snack) every day? We must eat to provide ourselves with the nutrients that help us to move, grow and stay healthy. Our food gives us the energy we need to perform daily activities. Do you know what is in food that gives us energy? (Answer: Nutrients, including proteins, carbohydrates and amino acids.)

Who remembers what a food chain is? A food chain is a series of nutrients and energy moving through a chain of organisms. Can you trace a food chain of the vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs or meat that you had for breakfast or will have for dinner? Who can give us an example of a food chain? (Examples: Sun --> grass --> cows [hamburger, milk, butter, cheese], Sun --> soybeans [tofu, soymilk], and Sun --> wheat plants --> wheat grain [bread].) Where do all of these food chains start? That's right, the sun! All food chains start with the sun, which provides energy to producers (organisms that are capable of making their own food, such as plants) that use photosynthesis to grow and become food for consumers like us (any organism that gets its food by eating producers or other organisms). Decomposers (such as bacteria, molds, mushrooms and mildew) break down discarded plant and animal (organic) materials into simpler substances, which returns nutrients to the soil and atmosphere for new plants to use to grow.

Now, why would an engineer care about a food chain? Well, because engineers are interested in everything that involves energy. It is the job of engineers to come up with new fuels and ways to conserve the energy we already use. Many types of engineers — chemical, mechanical and civil — work on projects that use energy flow and transfer. Energy efficiency (saving energy) and energy sources are incredibly important fields as everyone wants to find ways to use fewer natural resources, such as trees and fossil fuels, as energy sources. Can you name any renewable energy sources? (Examples: Wind, water and solar.) Engineers also investigate foods and how they grow and supply us with energy. Engineers look at how energy moves through a food chain and use that understanding to develop other energy technologies, even biodomes and space stations. Engineers ask questions such as, "How much energy is needed to grow plants in this environment?" and "How much food is needed to provide enough energy to the organisms or people living in this environment?" Those are some pretty important questions!

Today, we are going to learn more about food chains and a special type of food chain called a food web. Can anyone guess what a food web is? A food web is what happens when one organism gets energy from more than one source, such as people eating vegetables, chicken and milk for one meal. Food chains are often drawn with arrows that point in one direction, for example, from the sun to a plant. The arrows show us the direction that energy is moving through a food chain. Food webs are more complicated; they have arrows that go all over the place, from animals to both plants and other animals. Are you ready to look at some food webs? Let's go!

(Optional: This may be a good time to use the attached Example Food Web Worksheet to acquaint students with the concept of food webs before beginning the activity.)

Before the Activity

• Gather materials.
• Hold a class discussion. Explain the idea that food chains are sometimes too simple to show what is actually going on in an environment. For example, humans eat more than chicken; they also eat fish, vegetables, fruit, grains, cheese and other types of meat. Bears and mountain lions eat birds and fish, and bears also eat berries. Skunks eat insects, bird eggs, baby birds, as well as fruit and berries. If possible, have the class research food webs in a variety of ecosystems online or in natural history books.
• Consider using the attached Example Food Web Worksheet to acquaint students with the concept before beginning the activity.

With the Students: Part 1 — Human Food Web

• Divide the class into teams of eight students each. (Groups may be larger or smaller, if desired, but they must be at least five students each.)
• Have all the students stand in a circle.
• Distribute a ball of string or yarn to one member of each group. This person represents the sun and starts each food web.
• Have the first student hold tightly to the end of the string and toss the ball of string to another person in the group, across the circle.
• Have the second person name one thing in the ecosystem that uses energy from the sun. Next, have this person clasp the string with one hand and toss the ball of string on to another student in the circle with their other hand.
• Have the third student name something that eats or is eaten by the previous item named.
• Continue until all students in the circle are connected with the ball of string at least once.
• Have the student groups stop and look at the web they have created. Are some webs more complex than others? Why? (Answer: Some species may have been named twice because they are consumers of multiple things; some ecosystems have more variety of food sources, etc.) Point out to students how they have modeled a food chain or food web.

With the Students: Part 2 — Drawing Food Chains and Webs

• Divide the class into teams of two students each.
• Ask each pair to think of a terrestrial food chain and an aquatic food chain, and create each of these with words on one side of a piece of paper, using arrows to show the energy flow.
• Discuss the food webs they created as a class in Part 1, and tell them that they are now going to construct a food web in their pairs using pictures.
• Pass out an assortment of nature and wildlife magazines.
• Instruct the groups to make food webs on the other side of their paper by either drawing pictures of the living things in their food chains or finding them in the magazines and gluing them onto the paper. Suggest that they use arrows to show the direction of the flow of energy between the images.
• Conclude with an informal discussion using the questions and answers provided in the post-activity assessment of the Assessment section.

Biodome: A human-made, closed environment containing plants and animals existing in equilibrium.

Consumer: An organism requiring complex organic compounds for food, which it obtains by preying on other organisms or by eating organic matter.

Decomposer: Organisms such as bacteria and fungi that decompose dead plants and animals.

Ecosystem: A functional unit consisting of all the living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in a given area, and all the nonliving physical and chemical factors of their environment, linked together through nutrient cycling and energy flow. An ecosystem can be of any size — a log, pond, field, forest or the Earth's biosphere — but it always functions as a whole unit.

Energy: The capacity for vigorous activity; available power; the capacity to do work. For example, I eat chocolate to get quick energy.

Engineer: A person who applies scientific and mathematical principles to creative and practical ends such as the design, manufacture and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes and systems.

Environment: The surroundings in which an organism lives, including air, water, land, natural resources, flora, fauna, humans and their interrelationships. (Examples: Tundra, coniferous forest, deciduous forest, grassland prairie, mountains and rain forest.)

Food chain: A sequence of organisms, each of which uses the next, lower member of the sequence as a food source. Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov/OCEPAterms/fterms.html.

Food web: A complex network of many interconnected food chains and feeding interactions.

Photosynthesis: The process in green plants by which carbohydrates are made from carbon dioxide and water using sunlight as the energy source.

Producer: Any organism that is capable of producing its own food, usually through photosynthesis.

Pre-Activity Assessment

Idea Web : Ask students to brainstorm a list of environments. What different organisms live in these environments, both plants and animals? From where do these organisms get their energy and nutrients? Are there any energy or nutrient sources that are the same for all the environments?

Activity Embedded Assessment

Hypothesize : Ask each group what would happen if we combined two or more of their food webs. (Answer: If the food webs were combined, they would become more complex. More consumer food options might result. Fewer energy sources [plants or producers] might lead to more competition for food among the consumers.)

Drawing : Have students draw a diagram of their food web in the Part 1: Human Food Web activity.

Post-Activity Assessment

Informal Discussion: What Happens to the Energy ? Solicit, integrate and summarize student responses.

• How do we use the energy that is in the food we eat? (Discussion points: We use energy to move, keep warm [we give off heat all the time, and this heat energy comes from the food we eat] grow, think, stay healthy, and stay alive. What is left is stored in our bodies.)
• If only a fraction of the energy that an herbivore (plant eater) gets from plant food becomes part of the herbivore's body (its biomass), what happens to the rest of it? (Discussion points: The rest of the energy from the plant food is lost as waste [in droppings] or is used up for movement, keeping warm or just staying alive.)
• Is the same true for carnivores? (Discussion points: Yes, when a carnivore eats another animal, only a fraction of the energy from its animal food is incorporated into the carnivore's body.)
• Introduce the class to the idea that energy is lost at each link in the food chain or web because the living things pass on much less energy than they receive. This energy loss means that most food chains are only four or five links long. Can they find any long food chains within the food webs they made today?
• Which item on their food web probably had the most energy? Which item had the least? (Discussion points: Many engineers work with energy efficiency and conservation. Engineers pay attention to when energy is gained and energy is lost. Engineers design technologies for alternate sources of energy and ways to keep more energy in a system.)
• How do you think an engineer might use information about a food chain or web when designing a biodome or space station in which humans live? (Discussion points: To figure out how much energy is needed to grow plants in the artificial environment. To find out how much food is needed to provide enough energy to the organisms or people living in the environment. To make sure to include plants, animals and other organisms that are part of the same food web. To make sure the artificial ecosystem conditions provide the right kind and amount of resources [sunshine, air, nutrients, soil, water, climate, etc.] to support all the food web organisms. To conserve and re-use resources because they are important to survive and in limited supply.)

It may help to do an example food chain and/or web on the classroom board to clear up confusion before gluing begins. Or, use the attached Example Food Web Worksheet to acquaint students with the concept before beginning the activity.

Add-on to the Part 1: Human Food Web. Have one species in the web suddenly be threatened by extinction by asking that student to sit down. Which student(s) feel a tug on their string as a result of the first student sitting down? Those students should also sit down, and so on. Every student should end up sitting, since they are all connected. Make sure that one of the species in the web is a human; this helps to illustrate the human impact on other living things. (Adapted from: the Cornwall Wildlife Trust's Education Center, http://www.cornwallwildlifetrust.org.uk/education/school_grounds_activities).

Alternate project for Part 2: Drawing Food Chains and Webs. If string and wire or straws are available, have students construct their food webs as mobiles.

Assign students to research food webs in a variety of ecosystems online or in natural history books. Omnivores, such as humans, bears and skunks, often have more complicated food webs.

• For lower grades, make less complicated food chains instead of food webs. For example, have students make paper food chains by drawing or gluing pictures of food chain components onto separate pieces of paper. Then tape them together in the appropriate order.
• For upper grades, have students prepare their food webs and present them to the class discussing the interconnectedness and relationships of the animals and plants. Also, have students consider the effect of other nutrient cycles on their food web, such as carbon, nitrogen and water.

Students learn about energy and nutrient flow in various biosphere climates and environments. They learn about herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, food chains and food webs, seeing the interdependence between producers, consumers and decomposers. This lesson is part of a series of six lessons in whic...

With a continued focus on the Sonoran Desert, students are introduced to the concepts of food chains and food webs. They learn the difference between producers and consumers and study how these organisms function within their communities as participants in various food chains.

Students gain an understanding of the parts of a plant, plant types and how they produce their own food from sunlight through photosynthesis. They learn how plants play an important part in maintaining a balanced environment in which the living organisms of the Earth survive. This lesson is part of ...

Students must correctly determine whether a species is a producer or consumer, and what type of consumer; herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore. Students are provided with a list of Sonoran Desert species and asked to construct, within their groups, several food chains.

Bush, Mark B. Ecology of a Changing Planet, Second Edition. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Dictionary.com. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. Accessed December 5, 2006.

Food Chains and Webs, Making a Food Chain. Cornwall Wildlife Trust, UK. http://www.cornwallwildlifetrust.org.uk/ Accessed December 5, 2006. (Source of part of this activity; also includes additional fun and easy classroom and student activities)

Contributors

Supporting program, acknowledgements.

The contents of this digital library curriculum were developed under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation GK-12 grant no. 0338326. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policies of the Department of Education or National Science Foundation, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Last modified: October 21, 2020