Food chains

Question 1

What do food chains show?

Answer 1

What’s being eaten by what in an ecosystem

Question 2

What do food chains start with ?

Answer 2

with a producer
Producers make their own food by using energy from the sun
producers are usually green plants or algae - make glucose by photosynthesis

Question 3

What happens when a green plant produces glucose ?

Answer 3

some of it is used to make other biological molecules in the plant

These biological molecules are the plants biomass - the mass of living material

Biomass can be thought as energy stored in a plant

Energy is transferred through living organisms in an ecosystem when organisms eat other organisms

Question 4

What are producers eaten by ?

Answer 4

primary consumers which are then eaten by secondary consumers which are eaten by tertiary consumers

Question 5

what are predators ?

Answer 5

Consumers that hunt and kill other animals = predators = their prey is what they eat

Question 6

In a stable community containing prey and predators, what occurs ?

Answer 6

1) population of any species is limited due to amount of food availability
2) population of prey increase, population of predator increase
3) but as population of predator increase, number of prey will decrease
4) Predator-prey cycle are out of phase with each other as it takes a while for one population to respond to changes in the other population e.g. takes time and not immediate