Activity: Earthworm Food Chain
Materials:
Paper copies
Scissors
Tape
Procedure:
1. Students are going to make a paper chain showing how earthworms fit into the
food chain.
2. Give each student a copy of the animal sheets. There are two, make sure they
get one of each.
3. Have them color the animals and add details as necessary.
4. Have the students cut the animals into strips.
5. Starting with the worm strip, have the students make a loop.
6. NOW! Have students decide what animals would eat the worm. Link those
animals through the worm link.
7. Have students decide what might eat the secondary animals. Add to the chain.
8. The sun and plant are there in case you want to extend the activity to show that
worms make dirt and plants grow in the dirt and are helped by the sun.
9. Eventually what you want to end up with is a series of short chains radiating out
from the worm. Some possible combinations are:
Worm – bird – cat
Worm - frog – large bird
Worm – lizrd – bird – big bird
Worm – lizard – big lizard – bird – big bird
Worm – lizard - raccoon
Worm – lizard - owl
Worm – bird – raccoon
Background:
A food web is a set of interconnected food chains by which energy and materials
circulate within an ecosystem. The food web is divided into two broad categories: the
grazing web, which typically begins with green plants, algae, or photosynthesizing
plankton, and the detrital web, which begins with organic debris. These webs are made
up of individual food chains. In a grazing web, materials typically pass from plants to
plant eaters (herbivores) to flesh eaters (carnivores). In a detrital web, materials pass
from plant and animal matter to bacteria and fungi (decomposers), then to detrital
feeders (detritivores), and then to their predators (carnivores).
Generally, many interconnections exist within food webs. For example, the fungi that
decompose matter in a detrital web may sprout mushrooms that are consumed by
squirrels, mice, and deer in a grazing web. Robins are omnivores, that is, consumers of
both plants and animals, and thus are in both detrital and grazing webs. Robins typically
feed on earthworms, which are detritivores that feed upon decaying leaves.
Worms are any soft-bodied animal, usually small and often elongated lacking welldeveloped limbs. The term does not refer to any particular animal group, but is applied to
many unrelated invertebrates or their larvae and to a few vertebrates. The familiar
earthworm burrows in soil and feeds on dead materials, extracting organic matter from
the soil. This moderately complex animal has a complete digestive tract and a circulatory
system.