Ecosystems

Explain how the carbon cycle is related to a food web. Describe how energy and matter move through the food web and the carbon cycle.

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food chain

A food chain describes the feeding relationship between a producer and a single chain of consumers in an ecosystem

food web

A food web is a model of the feeding relationships between many different consumers and producers in an ecosystem.

producer

A producer is an organism that captures energy and stores in it food as chemical energy.

energy pyramid

An energy period is a model that shows the amount of energy available at each feeding level of an ecosystem.

consumers

An organism that obtains energy and nutrients by feeding on other organisms or their remains.

Explain how the amount of available energy changes as energy moves up a food chain.

Because energy is lost as it moves from producers to consumers, the bottom level is the largest. The available energy gets smaller and smaller the farther up the pyramid you go.

decomposers

Decomposers are organisms that break down dead plant and animal matter into simpler compounds

Imagine that muskrats are removed from a wetland ecosystem. Predict what would happen both to producers and to secondary consumer

The food chain would break down and if the food chain breaks down all the animals would die, and the ecosystem will no longer exist.

Explain why a food web provides a better model of an ecosystem than a food chain does.

The food web provides a better model of an ecosystem because the food web is a model between MANY different consumers and producers in an ecosystem. While the food chain is a model for just one consumer and producer.

Describe the role of producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.

The producers of an ecosystem make energy available to all the other living parts of an ecosystems. Consumers like humans eat the food that producers like plants made decomposers decompose dead plants and animals when they die like bacteria is a decomposer