1. Food Chains and Food Webs
1-3 Notes
Food Chains and Food Webs

2. Everything you do requires energy.

3. Energy
The energy you use is chemical energy, which comes from the food you eat.

4. Energy is vital to all living things.
Most of the energy on Earth comes directly or indirectly from the Sun.

5. Producers
Producer- an organism that captures energy and stores it in food as chemical energy.

6. Producers
Plants and other organisms capture energy from the Sun through photosynthesis.

7. Plants are the most common producers on land.
In water, photosynthetic bacteria and algae are the most common producers.

8. Producers
In the deep ocean, organisms use chemicals released by underwater vents instead of sunlight to convert energy to a usable form.

9. Consumer- an organism that gets its energy by eating other organisms.
Consumers
Consumer- an organism that gets its energy by eating other organisms.

10. Consumers
Consumers are classified by their position in a feeding relationship.
A feeding relationship starts with a producer, followed by one or more consumers.

11. Consumers
Primary Consumer- the first link between producers and the rest of the ecosystem.
Example: Grasshoppers and antelope that eat grasses.

12. Secondary Consumer- eats the primary consumers.
Examples: Wolves that eat the antelopes and birds that eat the grasshoppers.

13. Tertiary Consumer- eats the secondary consumers.
Example: a falcon that eats the bird.

14. Scavenger- a consumer that feeds on dead animals.
Consumers
Scavenger- a consumer that feeds on dead animals.
Example: Vulture

15. Decomposers
Decomposers- organisms that break down dead plant and animal matter into simpler compounds.

16. Decomposers are the clean up crew of an ecosystem.

17. Food Chains
Food chain- describes the feeding relationship between a producer and a SINGLE CHAIN of consumers.

18. Food Chains
The arrows in a food chain represent the flow of energy from organism to organism.

19. Food Webs
Food web- a model of the feeding relationships between many different consumers and producers in an ecosystem.

20. Food Web
Food webs show that sometimes an organism can be classified as more than one kind of consumer-both primary and secondary, for example.

21. Energy Pyramid
Energy pyramid- a model that shows the amount of energy available at each feeding level of an ecosystem.

22. Energy Pyramid
The first level is the producers, second level the primary consumers, and so on.
Usable energy decreases as it moves from producers up through the consumers.

23. Energy Pyramid
The amount of available energy gets smaller and smaller the farther up the pyramid you go.

24. Review 1. How are decomposers important in an ecosystem?
They make atmospheric nitrogen available to plants in usable form.
They convert organic matter into more complex compounds.
They are an important source of food for scavengers.
They break down organic matter into simpler compounds.

25. Review
2. Which type of organisms represents the level where a food chain begins?
Primary Consumers
Secondary Consumers
Tertiary Consumers
Producers

26. 3. The purpose of the arrows in the food web is to show Energy flow
Review
3. The purpose of the arrows in the food web is to show
Energy flow
Tertiary consumers
Level of organisms
Producers