Food Webs & Energy Flow
📋 What it is
Energy flows one way through a food web: producers → consumers → decomposers.
🗣️ Coach says
A food web maps who eats whom. Plants (producers) capture the Sun’s energy; animals (consumers) pass it along; decomposers recycle the leftovers. Energy flows ONE direction and shrinks at each step — which is why there are always fewer predators than prey.
🧠 Memory hook
Producers → consumers → decomposers. Energy flows one way and shrinks each step.
😂 Giggle
Why did the mushroom get invited to every forest party?
Because it was a fungi to be around!
😲 Whoa!
Only about 10% of the energy at one level reaches the next — that’s why a food chain rarely has more than 4 or 5 links.
✅ Quick check: Why are there usually fewer lions than gazelles in an ecosystem?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
Energy shrinks at each step of the web, so each level up supports fewer animals — fewer predators than prey.
The ~10% energy transfer limits how many organisms each higher level can support.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Draw Sun → grass → zebra → lion. At each arrow, imagine most of the energy being “lost” as heat.