1. S7L4a
Demonstrate in a food web that matter is transferred from one organism to another and can recycle between organisms and their environments.
Food Webs Matter

3. The Energy Cycle At Work
As animals eat grass, the nutrients contained in the grass are broken down into their chemical components and then rearranged to become living deer tissue
Waste products are produced in the animal’s digestive system and pass from the deer’s body back into the ecosystem.
Organisms break down this waste into simpler chemical components
The grass growing close by is able to take up those components and utilize them; they become a part of the grass
The cycle begins again.

4. Food Chains and Food Webs
The producers, consumers and decomposers of each ecosystem make up a food chain.
Energy flow through an ecosystem occurs in food chains, with energy passing from one organism to another.
There can be many food chains in an ecosystem.

5. consumers
producer
decomposers

6. Producers
Producers of an ecosystem use abiotic (non living) factors to obtain and store energy for themselves or the consumers that eat them.
Trees, bushes, shrubs, small plants, grass, moss

7. Consumers
Members of the ecosystem that depend on other members for food
Each time that a plant or animal consumes another organism, energy transfers to the consumer.
Deer, foxes, rabbits, raccoons, owls, hawks, snakes, mice spiders, insects

8. Three Types of Consumers
Herbivore-animals that eat only plants
Omnivore-animals that eat both plants and other animals
Carnivore-animals that eat only other animals
Saprophyte-organisms that obtain food from dead organisms or from the waste products of living organisms
Decomposers are members of the ecosystem that use dead or decaying organisms as a source of energy. They further reduce organic matter to its simplest chemical components.
They include fungi and bacteria

9. The interaction of many food chains is a food web.
Most producers and consumers interact with many others, forming a complex food web out of several simple food chains.

11. Predator is any organism that feeds on other living things, typically animals, but also insects and plants.
Prey is the organism that it feeds on.
Predator and prey together help maintain an ecological balance within their ecosystem.
This balance benefits the community as a whole, but can be either helpful or harmful to the individuals that make up the community, depending upon whether they are the predator or the prey.