1. Food Chains and Food Webs
Chapter 3, Lesson 1 pp

2. Vocabulary
Ecosystem: the living and nonliving things that share an environment and interact
Habitat: the home of a living thing
Food chain: a series of organisms that depend on one another for food
Producer: an organism, such as a plant, that makes its own food
Consumer: an animal that eats plants or other animals
Decomposer: an organism that breaks down dead plant and animal material
Food web: several food chains that are connected

3. Ecosystem
Which pond animals could also survive in a land ecosystem?
How might an ecosystem change if it suddenly became colder?
Living and nonliving things depend on each other in an ecosystem.
Pond, swamp, field, puddle, ocean
All ecosystems contain living and nonliving things.
POND:
Living: ______________, _________________, ______________
Nonliving: ______________, _______________, ____________
Ecosystems contain many habitats – specific homes for each organism.
Habitats provide:
Food
Water
shelter

4. Food Chains Organisms need ENERGY and give off ENERGY.
What might happen to grasshoppers and eagles if turtles were removed from the pond food chain?
Food Chains
Organisms need ENERGY and give off ENERGY.
We receive energy from the food we eat.
Food chains show energy passing from one organism to another in a specific ecosystem.
Arrows point to who is getting the energy.
The order of animals in a food chain is:
1: PRODUCER: makes its own food (like through photosynthesis)
Green plants, algae (getting original energy from the SUN)
2: CONSUMER: eats other organisms
All animals!
3: DECOMPOSER: breaks down dead plants and animals; puts nutrients back into the soil
Worms, bacteria
MAKE A FOOD CHAIN!
Write these organisms on strips of construction paper and form a paper chain in the order of this food chain:
grass
grasshopper
turtle
eagle
algae
snail
fish
You have created two separate food chains!
How are these food chains alike?

5. Food Webs
CONNECT YOUR CHAINS TO MAKE A WEB
What else does a turtle eat?
crayfish
Write crayfish on a strip of construction paper.
What do crayfish eat?
fish
What else does an eagle eat?
Connect them in order to make your chain into a web.
Link crayfish to the side of the turtle link on your food chain.
Link fish to crayfish and eagle.
By connecting food chains, you have begun to make a food web!
When animals eat several different kinds of food, they become a part of several different food chains. When these food chains connect, they form food webs.
Predators hunt other organisms for food.
Prey are the organisms that are hunted.
Herbivores eat plants.
Carnivores eat animals.
Omnivores eat plants and animals!
In an ecosystem, there is competition for food. Lots of predators enjoy the same type of prey. Remember Wolf Island?

6. Decomposers Decomposers are like the garbage men of ecosystems.
They get rid of all the dead stuff – by eating it!
When they eat the dead material they put nutrients into the water or soil.
Remember one of the three things seeds need to grow?
Water,
The right temperature, and
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