1) Producers like plants use photosynthesis or chemosynthesis to produce their own food, while consumers cannot produce their own food and must eat other organisms. 2) Herbivores eat producers, carnivores and omnivores eat other consumers, and top predators have no natural predators and sit at the top of the food chain. 3) Decomposers and detritivores help break down dead organic matter and waste, recycling nutrients back into the food web.

1. BIOTIC
COMPONENTS

2. 1st Law & Food webs
Eat or be eaten.

3. Click on the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM Buffalo
Eat and be eaten

4. Autotroph / primary producer
Makes own food (glucose) from primary energy
source (sun or deep-sea thermal vents)
Photosynthesis Chemosynthesis
Image source: http://hartm242.wordpress.com/tag/chemosynthesis/
PPP: A plant = producer = photosynthesis

5. Heterotroph/ consumer
Hetero (others) troph (nutrition)
• Cannot make their own food
• Must eat other living organisms
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/mrshart/933775

7. Folivore (leaves)
frigivore (fruit)
granivore (seed)
Herbivore or primary consumer
Eat producers
mucivore (sap) palynivore (pollen)
nectivore
xylophage (wood)
(nectar)

8. Secondary consumers
Eat consumer level below them
Carnivore = meat-eaters Omnivore = eat animals and plants
Predator- hunting & eating Prey- hunted & eaten
Quaternary consumers eat tertiary consumers (eagle
eating a snake)

9. Top/ Apex predator
 The top-end of the food chain
Is not eaten by anything else
(is not prey) because it has
little/no natural enemies*
Humans often not
considered
natural enemies

10. Detritivores
• Eat detritus: plant and animal remains, shed parts
(skin, antlers, leaves), and wastes
• Scavengers- detritivores that specialized in carrion
(dead animal bodies) or other animal wastes

11. Decomposers (aka saprotrophs)
• gets its energy from non-living organic matter.
• Help speed up the decaying process.
Image source: sheppardsoftware.com
Fungi eat the dead matter by Cool fact: A gram of soil typically contains
releasing acid to melt the 40 million bacterial cells, and the bacteria
decaying material, then sucking on Earth form a biomass that exceeds
in all the acid, along with the that of all living plants and animals.
melted material

12. TROPHIC LEVELS

13. The difference between webs and chains

14. top predator