Producers & Consumers
This group makes their own food using sunlight.
What are producers or plants?
A simple sequence that shows who eats whom is called this.
What is a food chain?
The role of an animal that hunts and eats other animals is called this.
What is a predator?
Animals get the energy they need by eating these.
What is food?
Cutting down trees in a forest is called this and can remove producers.
What is deforestation?
An animal that eats only plants is called this.
What is an herbivore?
In a food chain, energy flows from this to this.
What are producers to consumers?
Name the role of an animal that is eaten by predators.
What is prey?
Where does the original source of energy for most food chains come from?
What is the Sun?
Name one way pollution can harm an ecosystem.
It can poison organisms, reduce oxygen in water, or damage habitats.
These organisms break down dead plants and animals and return nutrients to the soil.
What are decomposers?
Draw or describe a 3-step food chain that starts with a sunflower.
What is sunflower → grasshopper → bird? or similar
What role do pollinators (like bees) perform in many ecosystems?
What is pollination/assisting plant reproduction and helping producers make seeds?
Explain in one sentence how energy moves from the Sun to a hawk.
Plants capture sunlight and make food → insects or small animals eat plants → small animals are eaten by larger animals → hawk eats those animals.
Give one example of how humans can help protect ecosystems.
What is planting native plants, creating protected areas, reducing pollution, or recycling?
Name two differences between a producer and a consumer.
Producers make food through photosynthesis and usually are plants; consumers eat other organisms and cannot make their own food.
Explain why a food web is a better representation than a single food chain.
Because most organisms eat and are eaten by more than one species, so a web shows multiple connected feeding relationships.
Define a niche in one sentence.
A niche is the role and place an organism has in its habitat, including how it gets food, shelter, and interacts with other organisms.
Name three things organisms use energy for.
What are growth, movement, and maintaining body temperature/body repair.
Explain how removing a top predator (like wolves) might change an ecosystem.
It can cause an increase in prey species, which may overeat plants, leading to habitat degradation and changes in other species populations.
Give an example of a producer, a primary consumer, and a secondary consumer from a grassland ecosystem.
What are grass (producer), rabbit (primary consumer), and fox (secondary consumer)
If a disease reduces a population of primary consumers, explain two possible effects on the rest of the food web.
Predator populations may decline due to less food; producers may increase because they are eaten less; decomposer dynamics could change
Describe how two species might compete and one way they could avoid direct competition.
They might compete for the same food or space; they could avoid competition by using different parts of the habitat, eating at different times, or eating different foods.
Describe how energy changes form as it moves from the Sun through plants to animals, including a short note about energy loss.
Sunlight (light energy) is captured by plants and stored as chemical energy in plant tissues; when animals eat plants, chemical energy transfers to the animal for movement and growth; some energy is lost as heat at each step.
Propose a classroom project that helps students study energy flow in a local ecosystem (include one data to collect and one hypothesis to test)
Answer example: Set up a schoolyard survey: collect data on number of producers (plant species) and presence of herbivores over a month; hypothesis: “Areas with more native plants will support more herbivores.”