Bio
magnification
activity assignment
Name:
In this activity, your task is to following your teacher’s instructions in how biomagnification
affects a food chain.
Procedure:
1. Your teacher will distribute a playing card to every student in the room.
2. The playing cards represents the following:
a. The “King” will be the top consumer (tertiary consumer). There is only 1 top
consumer.
b. The “Jack” will be the secondary consumer.
c. Any “red” cards will be primary consumer and
d. Any “black” cards will be the producer.
3. You are then to get into your appropriate groups.
4. Every producer will get a random plate of food with 4 of the same thing.
5. The plates contain a regular non-contaminated plate of food, OR a contaminated plate of
food. For example: If sushi is used, then the contaminated one will have really strong
wasabi.
6. The producer will consume 1 of the 4 pieces of food on their plate.
7. Record the # of contaminated in the table below.
8. Producers will pass their plate of food to the 1° consumers. Some will have more than 1
plate.
9. Now, the 1° consumers will consume the producers by eating 1 piece from the plate.
10. Record the # of contaminated and non-contaminated from the 1° consumers.
11. Pass the food to 2° consumers and they will take 1 piece out of the plate. (At this
point there should only be 1 piece of food left).
12. Record the # of contaminated and non-contaminated from the 2° consumers.
13. Finally, pass all the food to the top consumer and Record.
Trophic Level
Producer
1° Consumer
(Primary)
2° Consumer
(Primary)
3° Consumer
(Tertiary)
Number of
individuals
Number of
Number of
%
noncontaminated Contaminated
contaminated
Procedures for Visualizing bioaccumulation in a food chain
1. Cut out all the Tuna fish on the following page.
2. Paste the # of tuna fish from class activity on to the food chain. If there were 15
producers in your activity, paste 15.
3. Use a red marker or pencil crayon, and place a red dot for every contaminated piece in
each trophic level. You can place more than 1 red dot for every Tuna fish. If there were
7 contaminated pieces at the producer level, place in 7 red dots at the producer level.
4. Continue until you have completed the food chain.
Questions for the activity:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Explain in your own words your observations from this activity.
What is biomagnification?
How does biomagnification affect the individual trophic levels in the food chain?
What are some ways that can prevent bioaccumulation from occurring?
Describe why it is not recommended for pregnant females to consume mature tuna fish?
Provide an example of how introducing a contaminant into a food chain can affect an
entire ecosystem.
7. Complete the readings and questions from A Case Study Examining Mercury
Biomagnification. http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/mercury_in_fish.pdf
Food chain affected by biomagnification
3° Consumer 2° Consumer 1° Consumer Producers Tuna Fish Cut outs
Teacher Instructions:
To setup your proportions for each trophic level, I use a general rule of 5% - 15% - 35% - 55% Tertiary, Secondary, Primary and Producers respectively. You will have to play around with the
numbers to have a balance with all your trophic levels.
In a class of 28, I would have
15 Producers
9 Primary Consumers
3 Secondary Consumers
1 Tertiary Consumer
For each plate of food, you will need 4 of the same thing for just the producer level.
If you have a class of 28 and 15 students at the producer level, you will need 4 x 15 = 60 pieces
in total.
To setup your “Contaminants”, you can use a variety of items from different colour Smarties,
Crackers that have hot sauce, or to Sushi with Wasabi.
I find from experience, the stranger the contaminant, the better the effect! But if you are press
on time, any simple contaminant would do.
Cut outs for each trophic level
PRODUCERS 1° Consumers 2° Consumers 3° Consumers