Food Chains
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Producers and Consumers
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Food Chains
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Predators and Prey
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Producers make their own food.
Green plants main producers
Photosynthesis-process plants use to make
food.
Consumers can’t make own food.
Consumers eat producers or other
consumers.
Show how one living thing depends on
another living thing for food
Primary consumers eat plants.
Herbivores-eat only plants
Herbivores have special body parts to help
get and use stored energy
Secondary consumers-animals that eat the
herbivores…called carnivores.
Carnivores-eat meat
Tertiary consumers-carnivores that eat
other carnivores.
Omnivores-eat both plants and animals
Predators-animals that hunt and eat other
animals
Prey-animals that are eaten by predators.
Top predators-not food for any other animal
Humans are the highest top predator
Ecosystem-producers, predators, and prey,
along with air, water, and other parts of an
area
Scavengers-carnivores that do not huntmainly feed on dead animals
Decomposers-last link in the food chain
They break down any leftover living material
and make the energy available for other
living things
Without decomposers, the flow of energy
would be a one-way street instead of a cycle
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Food Webs
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Energy Pyramid
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Survival
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Food web is a complex web of relationships
between living things
Many food chains put together
Ocean food webs, forest food webs
Energy pyramids show how energy is lost as
it passes from one part of a food chain ot
food web to the next
Only a fraction of the energy from one level
is used at the next
Energy is lost from movement, digestion and
reproduction
Less energy is available as you move up
One-tenth of the energy is passes along at
each level
Need more producers than consumers
More primary consumers than secondary
consumers
More secondary consumers than tertiary
consumers
Food chains can’t have too many links, 4 or 5
competition-fighting for the same resources
each species have adaptations that help its
members find what they need to survive
adaptations-special body parts or behaviors
changes in an ecosystem make it hard for
living things to survive
changes effect other levels in chain
diseases, natural disasters, and human
caused threats (oil spills, pesticides) can
harm food chains
invasive species-species introduced and do
harm to an ecosystem (foxes in Alaksa)