Each team will receive a number of cards with ocean creatures described and drawn on them. These are the plants and animals from the area around Catalina Island and the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Students may want to add cards of their own for this activity.
Using the cards provided and your cards from CIMI create a food chain and subsequently a food web. There are many food chains and food webs in the earth's ecosystems; we will focus on the ocean food web for this activity.
links to animal and
plant life web sites
sam and
gabes page on rays
alejandro's page on
sharks
Monterey
Bay @ nationalgeographic.com - virtual tour of kelp forest !!
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KEY WORDS. producer consumer decomposer autotrophic heterotrophic interdependence benthic neckton intertidal zone sunlight zone twilight zone dark (bathyepelagic) zone |
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PROCEDURE
1. Sort the cards you have into two piles, producers and consumers. Then put them into levels of consumers.
2. Using the information that is contained on the cards and from your knowledge, organize the cards into first food chains and then webs.
3. Review your diagram showing where the layers each organism is likely to be found. There are three basic zones for all organisms. Make sure you sort your cards into the correct habitat or life zone. You may want to check the Ocean life CD or Internet resources such as can be found on the PCDS useful links Oceanography page to help you sort your cards.
4. Place the cards on a large sheet of paper and trace around the premade cards. Tape your cards to the web. Draw the lines of energy between the organisms in your chains and web.
* extra time option* Choose one creature from your web. Make a hyperstudio card describing that creature and its place in the ocean food web. Be sure to include it's predators and prey, so that it can be linked to other animals in the class stack. Submit your card electronically.
DISCUSSION
1.Where does the each food web begin?
2.Which members in the ecosystem are involved in the most food webs? Explain why.
3.What happens if one member of a food web disappears?
4.What will happen if one member of the food web should somehow become poisoned?
5.Which members of the ocean food web are competing for food?
6.At what part of the food web do you always find bacteria and nutrients?
Explain why.
7.Why do we need to understand the food web of an ecosystem?
8.How would the layer in which an animal lived effect the food web?
