Food Chains and Food Webs (10/2-10/6)

Above is a food web
http://maggiesscienceconnection.weebly.com/habitats-food-chains--webs-trophic-pyramid.html

Summary:

This week in science we were learning about food chains and food webs. Food webs are a lot of food chains that are linked together. For example: In a food web there are a lot of different plants and animals, and it shows where they get energy from. Food webs are much more complex than food chains as you can see in the picture above. 

Food chains are chains that connect the different things that eat each other. In a food chain, plants are the only living organisms that make their own food. Check out my blog about photosynthesis. There is a producer (a plant because it makes its own food) Primary consumers (animals that eat plants), secondary consumers (animals that eat other animals that depend on plants). There is also decomposers (fungi & bacteria decompose the dead body making nutrients which the plant uses during photosynthesis to get energy.) Here is an example that I used in my blog about food chains:  phytoplankton (this is the producer), get eaten by zooplankton (this is the primary consumer), which gets eaten by smaller fish like anchovies (secondary consumers). After the anchovies die, the decomposers come and turn it into nutrients.

Food webs are, as I said, different food chains connected. Look at the picture on the top of this page, the mouse can be eaten by the foxes, the hawks, the owls, or the snakes. In class we did a food web assignment. We were assigned to draw different things that a girl named Melissa would eat for her dinner. Then we would turn it into a food web connecting arrows showing where the animal/plant gets its energy from. 

 I hope you have learned about food chains and food webs from my examples. Try to make a food web, now that you know what it is. Draw the things that make up your dinner. For example: instead of drawing salad, draw grass. Instead of drawing steak, draw a cow. Once you have finished drawing the things you have had for the past couple of dinners, connect each organism. Ex: Draw an arrow from the grass to the cow, because that is where the cow gets its energy from. Drawing food webs is fun, you can make them really big and interesting. Have fun!