For example, for a broader habitat, you might decide to focus on aquatic or desert spaces. Narrowing down your habitat by location, such as the Santa Fe desert, can make it even easier to construct a simple food web.
It’s okay if your list doesn’t include every creature to live in the chosen habitat. For example, if you have 30 minutes to create the food web, only spend 5 minutes maximum creating this initial list. If you are studying the dry desert, you might list out lizards, cacti, snakes, and spiders. If you are studying the vast ocean, you might list out fish, sharks, and even plankton!
If you run out of paper space while creating your web, you can reduce the size of your font or even write on the back of the page, too.
For example, you might title your work, “A Desert Food Web. ” You could also go with, “A Circle of Life in the Ocean,” or “A Jungle Food Web. ”
For example, a barn-owl in your chart could also be labeled by its scientific name, “Tytonidae. ”
For example, if you are drawing a food web of the desert, you might include cacti as a producer. It survives by using photosynthesis to convert sunlight to energy. Another name for primary producers in ecosystems is autotrophs. Some people like to put primary producers at the bottom of the page to create a visual “foundation” for their web. But, this isn’t necessary. You can put your producers anywhere on the page, as long as you leave some space between them.
Look at your initial organism list to identify any possible primary consumers. You can also ask yourself, “Which creature would eat the producers I’ve listed?” For example, in a desert food web, the cacti and grass (both producers) could get eaten by grasshoppers (primary consumer). Because a food web isn’t supposed to resemble a list, the exact placement of each group of organisms isn’t as important as leaving enough room to draw arrows between them.
For example, in a desert food web, a rat could be a secondary consumer. It is an omnivore that could eat both the grass and grasshoppers.
You can add as many levels or layers as you like to your food web. The animals that are the final predators, almost always carnivores, are considered the alpha predators of your web. For example, in a desert food web, a snake could be a tertiary consumer. It preys upon rats. A hawk could be a quaternary consumer, as it preys upon snakes. If you’d like your web to resemble more a pyramid design, you’ll want to start with producers on 1 side of the page and end with predators on the opposite end.
It’s important to note that decomposers usually complete work that is invisible to the naked eye. However, they are still a critical part of the food web system. These organisms can be placed anywhere on the page.
For example, in a desert food web, you’d start 1 arrow at the grass and connect it to the grasshoppers. You’d start another arrow at the grass and connect it to the rats, too. This is a primary difference between a food web and a food chain. A food web is a bit more chaotic in that it can show multiple different arrows between creatures. Your final web will not be linear. You can also color-code the arrows in a larger web. For example, color plant-eaten-by-animal arrows green and animal-eaten-by-animal arrows red. If you are drawing your food web digitally, then you may need to use a “shape” tool to create arrows.
