What is a Food Web?What is a Food Web?

Food chains show how energy is passed from the Sun to producers, consumers, and decomposers. In any ecosystem many food chains overlap. Different food chains may include some of the same organisms. Several consumers may eat all the same kind of plant or animal for food. When this happens, the food chains form a food web. A food web shows how food chains are related within an ecosystem.

Food webs in one community may beconnected to food webs in anothercommunity. This makes the passageof energy even more complex.

Using Graphic SourcesUsing Graphic Sources• What consumer is found in several food

chains? What food chains is it a part of?

• What might happen to this food web if the hawk dies?

• Make a list describing all the paths energy takes in the food web.

How do food chains and food webs relate?

• Answer the question…– With a partner– In your Learning Notebook

food webfood web

• The pattern that shows how food chains are related.

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