Vocabulary
These things make their own food using sunlight.
What are producers?
Opossums, raccoons, crows
Omnivores
What is the gas plants need to grow?
Carbon dioxide
These animals eat ONLY other animals.
What are carnivores?
Gophers, mice, snails
Herbivores
Where does all energy in an ecosystem originally come from?
Sunlight
These animals eat ONLY items such as plants.
Fungi, bacteria, maggots
Decomposers
Plants are ____________________ because they make their own food.
Humans are an example of this because most people eat both plants AND meat.
What are omnivores?
Cougars, sharks, T-Rex
Carnivores
Consumers need _________________ to breathe.
Oxygen
Explain one way living things can interact in an ecosystem.
-eating or being eaten by other animals
-giving off and taking up gases like carbon dioxide and oxygen
-recycling nutrients
-other acceptable ideas
These animals eat dead animals and break down dead materials.
What are decomposers?
Phytoplankton, algae, trees
Producers
Explain how a food chain is different from a food web.
A food chain is one small piece of a food web. The food chain shows one example of what another animal eats. A food web is bigger and has many more animals and examples of what they eat.
Explain what would happen if there were no decomposers in our world.
Dead animals and materials would pile up and there would not be any room to move around.