Food Webs and Decomposers
- Biology
- Ages 8–11 · Grades 3–5
What you’ll find out
- Producers make food from sunlight; consumers get energy by eating other living things.
- Linked food chains form a food web, because most animals eat several kinds of food.
- Decomposers break down dead material and return nutrients to the soil.
No sign-up and no real names. In the lesson you check your understanding as you read, and practise until it sticks.
Producers and consumers
Plants are called producers, because they produce their own food using sunlight. Animals are consumers: they get their energy by eating other living things. A rabbit eats grass, and a fox eats the rabbit, which makes a food chain. In a real habitat, though, most animals eat more than one thing. A fox also eats mice, and owls hunt mice too. When many food chains link together like this, they form a food web.
Decomposers recycle
When plants and animals die, their bodies do not stay around for ever. Decomposers break them down. Mushrooms, earthworms and tiny living things called bacteria are all decomposers. They feed on dead leaves, fallen logs, dead animals and waste. As they do this, they return nutrients to the soil, and plants use those nutrients to grow. Without decomposers, dead material would pile up everywhere.
Curriculum links: NGSS 5-LS2-1 · England KS2: Animals, including humans · Cambridge Primary Stages 4–6: Biology · NCERT Environmental Studies, Classes 3–5