SIERRA NEVADA FOOD WEB ACTIVITY

PROCEDURE

  1. With your team, take a large piece of butcher paper and then write down the name of each of the organisms (from the back side of this sheet) randomly all over the paper.
  2. Identify the role of each organism by putting one of the following letters just beneath the name of the organism:P (producer), C (consumer), D (decomposer or detritus feeder), and S (scavenger). Then circle each organism along with its letter.
  3. Now draw a line from any food to the organism that eats it. These lines represent the direction in which energy flows in an ecosystem and should always have arrow tips that point from the food towards the organism that is eating the food.
  4. Once the team has completed that chart, it is time for each individual team member to TYPE responses to the following:

ANALYSIS QUESTIONS

  1. Describe eight different food chains from your team food web.
  1. On two of your food chains, identify the producer and three levels of consumers.
  1. Identify three organisms that are at the top of their food chains.
  1. If the secondary consumers in one of the food chains use 4,200 kcal, what amount of energy was absorbed by the producers in that food chain?
  1. What amount of energy will be available to the tertiary consumers?
  1. Describe the differences between a pyramid of energy, a pyramid of numbers, and a pyramid of biomass.
  1. Describe what would happen to this food web if all the primary consumerswent extinct.
  1. Describe what would happen to this food web if the decomposers were removed.
  1. What would happen to this food web if a non-native beetle started killing all the oak trees?
  1. What do you think is more resilient, food webs with many species, or food webs with just a few species? Please explain your answer fully.

ORGANISMS FOUND IN THE SIERRA NEVADA ECOSYSTEM

California Bat (flying insects)

Mountain Lion (deer, rabbits, large rodents, and bighorn sheep)

Black Beer (berries, insect larvae, small mammals, nuts, tubers)

Bob Cat (small mammals and birds)

Valley Oak

Live Oak

Lodgepole Pine

Jeffrey Pine

Sugar Pine

Bigleaf Maple

Oak Moth Larva (oak tree leaves)

Mosquitoes (protests and mammal blood)

Coyote (scavenger, rodents, rabbits, vegetable matter)

Lodgepole Chipmunk (acorns, seeds)

California Ground Squirrel (acorns, seeds, mushrooms, birds, insects)

Yellow-bellied Marmot (grasses)

Mule deer (grasses and herbaceous plants)

Stellar Jay Bird (insects, worms, larvae)

Great Horned Owl (rodents, lizard, snakes)

Alpine Grasses

Herbaceous Plants

Elderberry bushes

Mushrooms (decomposer)

Bacteria (decomposer)

Beetles (plants, fungus)

California King Snake (rodents)

Spiders (insects)

California Poppy

Bracket fungus (decomposer)

Thimbleberry bush

Raccoon (fruits, nuts, insects, frogs)

Golden trout (mosquitoes, insect larvae)

Bighorn sheep (grasses, herbaceous plants)

Mayfly larvae (aquatic plants)

Acorn woodpecker (acorn, insects)

Worms (dead plants and animals)

Protists