Players in an Ecosystem

A Food Chain

My Longest Food Chain

Reflect & Synthesize:

1. Choose one of your Food Chains that you created and explain how it works.
2. Can a Food Web be considered a "system"? Why or why not?
3. What happens if a plant or animal all of a sudden disappears from the food web?
4. Using this food chain, "sunlight to apple to worm to bird to cat," How do organisms in this food chain get the matter they need for body repair and growth?
5. Using the same food chain in #4, How do organisms in that food chain get the energy they need for body warmth and motion?
6. What do you think happens to the matter that is NOT used by the organisms in a food chain or food web? Is it wasted or does something else happen?
   

Answers:

1. Well I will choose my longest food chain. And first it starts with leaves. After that a caterpillar eats that leaf and gets nutrients from that. That caterpillar then gets eaten by a hedgehog. Then finally that hedgehog gets eaten by an owl.
   
2. It can because a food web is part of many different ecosystems. So it could be called a food web system.
   
3. Well if a plant or animal disappears from a food web then that will cause a slow reaction where each animal that eats that animal or plant will start to die off one after another and a lot of species would get endangered.
   
4. A worm would eat the apple for nutrients, the bird would eat the worm for nutrients, and finally the cat would eat the bird for nutrients.
   
5. They eat one another and from that they get enough energy and matter for body warmth and motion.
   
6. The matter that is not used will be kept in the body like fat for example so when another animal eats that animal it will get the matter and energy that was not used by the other animal.