Energy Flow
The source of energy for all food chains.
What is the Sun?
This type of organism makes its own food using sunlight.
What is a producer?
A series of organisms showing one path of energy flow.
What is a food chain?
A plant grows in sunlight; a plant in the dark stays small.
What is sunlight is needed for plant growth?
This herbivore would starve if all grass disappeared in a dinosaur ecosystem.
What is Triceratops?
This fox gets its energy indirectly from the cactus it eats through the mouse.
What is energy from the cactus?
A consumer that eats only plants.
What is a herbivore?
Multiple interconnected food chains.
What is a food web?
A plant in normal air grows; a plant in a sealed container does not.
What is plants need air (carbon dioxide) to grow?
This carnivore would die if herbivores in its ecosystem die.
What is Tyrannosaurus rex?
An arrow from a producer to a herbivore represents this.
What is the flow of energy?
A consumer that eats only other animals.
What is a carnivore?
In a food chain grass → rabbit → fox, this organism is the producer.
What is the grass?
Plants grow with sunlight and air but not in darkness or without air.
What is plants use sunlight and air to make food?
These insects decrease in population when frogs are added to a pond and eat them.
What are insects previously eaten by fish?
This type of consumer would die if all producers disappeared because their food source would vanish.
What is a carnivore?
A consumer that eats both plants and animals.
What is an omnivore?
This happens to squirrels, robins, and hawks if all oak trees in a forest die.
What is their population decreases or they struggle to survive?
Why doesn’t soil alone make plants grow?
What is sunlight and air are also required for growth?
Hawks may lose their prey if these animals die after oak trees are gone.
What are squirrels and robins?
In the ocean, energy flows from phytoplankton to small fish to sharks in this type of diagram.
What is a food chain?
Organisms that break down dead plants and animals and return nutrients to the soil.
What are decomposers?
Arrows in a food chain diagram are used for this purpose.
What is showing the direction of energy flow?
Plant has water and soil but no sunlight or air. What happens?
What is it won’t grow because it can’t make food?
Sunlight is the base of energy in all ecosystems because producers need it to do this process.
What is photosynthesis?