Ecosystems & Food Webs
📋 What it is
Energy flows from producers to consumers to decomposers; remove one and the whole web feels it.
🗣️ Coach says
An ecosystem is a web of who-eats-whom. Plants (producers) capture the Sun’s energy, animals (consumers) pass it along, and decomposers recycle everything back. Pull one thread — say, remove a predator — and the whole web wobbles in surprising ways.
🧠 Memory hook
Energy flows: producers → consumers → decomposers. Everything is connected.
😂 Giggle
Why don't biologists trust atoms?
Because they make up everything — including all living things!
😲 Whoa!
When wolves returned to Yellowstone, they changed the RIVERS — fewer deer meant more trees, which reshaped the landscape. One species, huge ripple.
✅ Quick check: If every plant in a food web died, what happens to the animals?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
They’d starve — producers are the base that captures energy for everything above them in the web.
All consumers ultimately depend on the energy producers capture.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Draw a mini web: Sun → grass → rabbit → fox. Cross out the grass and trace the collapse upward.