Thursday, September 20, 2007

"Interfering with Food Webs"

Bellwork:
1) Draw a food chain.
2) A decomposer eats _______________.
3) Is algae a producer or a consumer?

- Review of yesterday's work
- Record new vocabulary in ecosystem glossary
Food chain: A sequence of organisms that eat one another in an ecosystem
Food web: All the food chains in an ecosystem connected together
Producer: Organism that makes its own food (ex: plants or algae)
Consumer: Organism that eats other organisms (ex: animals)
Decomposer: Organism that breaks down dead organisms (ex: bacteria, mushrooms, earthworms)
- Create an arctic food web
- Discuss the effects of changes in a food web:
What happens if your top predator goes extinct?
What happens if humans overfish a marine ecosystem?
What happens if the producer/plant in an ecosystem dies?
==>Plants are essential to an ecosystem's survival. Consumers are important too: if a predator disappears its prey population grows (sometimes out of control); if an organism's prey/food disappears it will starve to death.

Homework: Draw a food web with 1 producer, 1 decomposer, and 4 consumers