Name _____________________________________ Date_____________________ #_______
Food Chains and Webs Study Guide
1. Population - all the members of one species that live within an area of an ecosystem
2. Habitat - an area or place where an organism lives in an ecosystem
3. Predator - an animal that lives by preying on other animals
4. Prey - an animal hunted or caught for food
5. Producer - living thing that makes its own food
6. Consumer - living thing that eats other living things
7. Herbivore - animals that eat plants
8. Omnivore - animals that eat plants and other animals
9. Carnivore - animals that eat other animals
10. Ecosystem - all the living and nonliving things in an environment and the many
ways they interact
11. Decomposer - an organism that breaks down plant and animal waste and remains
12. Name four decomposers: earthworm, fungi, snail, and bacteria
13. Plants and animals compete for resources in their environments.
Ex: Two crickets compete for grass.
An eagle and a hawk compete for snakes.
Plants compete for carbon dioxide and water.
14. Food Chain – the transfer of energy from one organism to another by eating and being
eaten
15. Food web – a system of overlapping food chains in which the flow energy branches out in
many directions
16. Look at the picture above of the savannah ecosystem. What would happen if there was a
drought that occurred in the area? How would this affect living things in the ecosystem?
If a drought occurred in the area, the land would dry up. Then the animals would not
have anything to drink. The plants would also die. The animals would have to either
move to a new habitat that had available resources or die.
17. What animals in the savannah ecosystem in the picture above are competing for the same
resources, and what are they competing for?
The zebras are competing with each other for the grass.
The zebras are competing with the giraffes and wildebeests for the grass.
18. What would happen to this wetland ecosystem if more alligators moved in?
The alligators would eat all of the fish, frogs, egrets, etc. The number of these
organisms would decrease. The alligators would die or have to move to another
habitat with more resources. If the fish, frogs, egrets, etc. decrease, the plants that
these organisms eat would increase.
19. Make a food chain using animals from the swamp ecosystem above. Label each part as:
the sun, producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer, and
decomposer.
The sun
Aquatic plant producer
Fishprimary
consumer
Bacteriadecomposer
Egretsecondary
consumer
Alligatortertiary
consumer