Question

Look at the drawing of the food chain that ends in a hawk.
a. Which organism is the producer in this food chain?
b. Which organisms are consumers in this food chain?
c. What do the arrows in the food chain show?


Grass → cricket → spiderman → small bird → hawk

Answer 1

Answer:

Energy must constantly flow through an ecosystem for the system to remain stable. What exactly does this mean? Essentially, it means that organisms must eat other organisms. Food chains (Figure below) show the eating patterns in an ecosystem. Food energy flows from one organism to another. Arrows are used to show the feeding relationship between the animals. The arrow points from the organism being eaten to the organism that eats it. For example, an arrow from a plant to a grasshopper shows that the grasshopper eats the leaves. Energy and nutrients are moving from the plant to the grasshopper. Next, a bird might prey on the grasshopper, a snake may eat the bird, and then an owl might eat the snake. The food chain would be:

plant → grasshopper → bird → snake → owl.

A food chain cannot continue to go on and on. For example the food chain could not be:

plant → grasshopper → spider → frog → lizard → fox → hawk.

Food chains only have 4 or 5 total levels. Therefore, a chain has only 3 or 4 levels for energy transfer.