Laboratory Activity # 5

FOOD WEB

Overview:
Food web is an important ecological concept. Basically, food web represents
feeding relationships within a community (Smith and Smith 2009). It also implies the
transfer of food energy from its source in plants through herbivores to carnivores (Krebs
2009). Normally, food webs consist of a number of food chains meshed together. Each
food chain is a descriptive diagram including a series of arrows, each pointing from one
species to another, representing the flow of food energy from one feeding group of
organisms to another.
There are two types of food chains: the grazing food chain, beginning with
autotrophs, and the detrital food chain, beginning with dead organic matter (Smith &
Smith 2009). In a grazing food chain, energy and nutrients move from plants to the
herbivores consuming them, and to the carnivores or omnivores preying upon the
herbivores. In a detrital food chain, dead organic matter of plants and animals is broken
down by decomposers, e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detritivores and then
carnivores.
Food web offers an important tool for investigating the ecological interactions that
define energy flows and predator-prey relationship (Cain et al. 2008). Figure 1 shows a
simplified food web in a desert ecosystem. In this food web, grasshoppers feed on
plants; scorpions’ prey on grasshoppers; kit foxes’ prey on scorpions. While the food
web showed here is a simple one, most feed webs are complex and involve many
species with both strong and weak interactions among them (Pimm et al. 1991). For
example, the predators of a scorpion in a desert ecosystem might be a golden eagle, an
owl, a roadrunner, or a fox.

Learning Objectives:
a. To construct a food web in a given ecosystem;
b. To identify the following from the web constructed:
1.producers
2.first order consumers;
3.second order consumers
c. To explain the importance of a food web in an ecosystem.

Directions:
Construct a Food web using the given situation. This ecosystem represents a
farm area. The corn is the main source of food for many of the herbivores in the area.
You can draw or may not have to draw pictures/ you can just use the animal names and
draw arrows between them. If you have laptop, nice to use pictures for the web to add
life. Answer developmental questions.
Developmental questions:

1. What are the producers in the web?

Corn/Plant

2. What are the first order consumers found in the web?

Worm, Grasshopper, Chicken, Rat, Cow, Horse

3. What are the secondary consumers of your web?

Frog, Lizard, Snake, Man

4. Identify the ultimate consumer. (last eater)

Fungi and Bacteria as decomposers

5. What do you think will happen to any of the first order consumers when
the population of producers decreases? Support your answer.

If the primary consumers became extinct, there would be nothing to eat the
producers, therefore they would become over populated and there would be no
food for the secondary consumers, therefore they would die and animal life will
not survive.