Giana Iannacone
12-20-09
RASE: To what extent do living things depend on each other to survive?
Living things depend on each other so much to survive. No matter what
type of animal or plant, it depends on something to get the energy/protein that it
needs. The first part of the food web is the sun. The sun delivers the
energy/protein to the plants, which use photosynthesis to get that energy/protein.
Some small animals can also make their own energy/protein. (Where Does Food
Come From?) These plants are in the group called producers or autotrophs,
because they make the energy/protein. They are mostly plants and come first in the
food web. As you can see, the plants depend on the sun to get the energy/protein
they need. (Trophic Levels)
After the sun and plants, come the animals that can’t make their own food.
Since they can’t make their own food, they must eat the plants that contain
energy/protein. This means that they depend on the plants to get the energy/protein
from the sun. This goes on like a big chain. An example would be: A human
drinks milk that contains nutrients. The milk comes from a cow. The cow has
nutrients in him/her that gets passed into the milk. But how does the cow get the
nutrients? The cow ate grass and grain that contain nutrients that it got from the
sun, so now the cow has nutrients in it and its milk. That is how the human got the
nutrients from the milk. I can infer that if the plants did not get the energy/protein
from the sun, the cow would not have gotten energy/protein and so on. (Where
Does Food Come From) Animals that eat other animals or plants are called
consumers or heterotrophs. The consumers depend on producers to get
energy/protein. (Trophic Levels)
Now I am going to get a little more specific. The first group in the food
chain is the Producers. The Producers are plants and get the energy/protein from
the sun. Next come the Primary Consumers. They are animals that eat the plants to
get their energy/protein. If the plants don’t get energy/protein from the sun, then
these animals would not be able to get energy/protein. They depend on them. After
them come the Secondary Consumers. These animals eat the Primary Consumers
to get energy/protein. As you have noticed if the Primary Consumers do not get
energy/protein, neither do the Secondary Consumers. Next come the Tertiary
Consumers. These are animals that eat the Secondary Consumers. You can easily
infer that if the Consumers below the Tertiary Consumers do not get
energy/protein, the Tertiary Consumers do not either. Lastly are the Decomposers.
These eat dead animals and turn them into nutrients (soil) that are given to the
Producers. If the Decomposers do not get the energy/protein from the dead
animals, they can’t make soil for the producers to grow and use. I make a big
inference that if one of these stages gets messed up, all of them get messed up and
there could be big consequences. (Food Web Video)
As you can very clearly see, our food web is a very valuable thing, and if
one little thing gets messed up, it can effect our whole life cycle. All living things
depend on each other to survive, no matter how different they may seem.