P.S. /IS.

104 8-316 2010 Food Chains and Webs

Viktoriya Kuz November 12.

Food chains and food webs both show the relation of animals in their habitat and the food they eat. There are prey and predators. Prey are the animals that are hunted by predators, and predators are the animals that obtain energy through eating animals, including herbivores, decomposers, and other predators. Food chains and food webs are a little bit different. Food chains go in one direction, as animals eat one another. Food webs show how animals and plants are connected through a few directions. If something happened to one source of energy in a food chain/web, the effect would depend upon whether its users were fully dependent upon the source. If they were, then they would probably die, and then other organisms would die as well, which would ruin the way of life in the ecosystem. This could also affect us. For example, if a sort of fish that we eat dies out because its source of food and energy has been removed, other fish will die. This will cause us to have less fish to eat as food. However, it can be good as well for us, if bad fish began to die out. This would decrease the loss of human lives to sharks, etc. Yet, this would really mess up the oceans food chain.

This is a food chain. As you can see, the herbivore eats the plant, and the carnivore eats the herbivore. Another carnivore eats the carnivore and so on. If the herbivore suddenly disappeared, the carnivore would die out, and then

This is a food web. You can see that a maned goose, a moth, and a dragonfly all eat the sedge. If the sedge disappeared, they would all die. This would also lead to the death of the frog, which eats the dragonfly.