Where is algae in the food chain

Organisms may have more than one trophic role because they eat a variety of food types. To receive the greatest benefit from the activity, students should have a basic familiarity with food webs.

This can be accomplished by having the students read the above content. Top of the Page. The Food Web Matching Game. This is an Antarctic food web. The organisms that fit into the web are listed below it. Your job is to place the organisms in their correct places on the food web.

Remember that the arrows indicate the direction of energy flow! Click here to get started! You will need Flash Player to play the game on-line. If your browser doesn't load the player automatically, you can download the free player from the Macromedia Website.

A Missing Link. Note to teachers: Click here to see the printable version of this extension. Note to teachers: This extension exercise can be done in a variety of ways.

Some suggestions are listed here: 1 Divide the class into three groups and assign each group a question from below if you have more than 3 groups, add questions about removing other organisms. Have the groups present their hypotheses to the entire class. Afterwards, ask and discuss questions 4 and 5 with the entire class. What would happen if you removed one of the organisms from the food web?

Are there other organisms that could take its place? Tiny but Mighty. Decomposers also play an extremely important role in the food web. What are the decomposers? In their role as decomposers, they break down dead plant and animal matter and release simple molecules that can be absorbed and used by autotrophs and some heterotrophs. Now that you know what the decomposers are and what they do, place them on your food web and draw arrows to show how they interact with the other organisms in the web.

Bacteria play other roles in the marine environment as well. They are integral to nutrient cycling in the marine environment. Also, some bacteria are producers; they produce organic matter from inorganic matter through photosynthesis and chemosynthesis. The animals seen as primary consumers include zooplankton, which is made up of the small larvae of larger fish that grow to become consumers at different levels of the food chain.

Other animals also known as zooplankton are small animals, such as adult worms and crustaceans that spend their lives feeding on algae. Secondary consumers on the next level of the food chain also consume algae along with other forms of marine plants and animals.

Secondary consumers include the baleen whale and the much smaller herring. The baleen whale is a large mammal with few predators that filter materials from the ocean through their mouths, this material includes algae and plankton.

Herring is a smaller fish that also consumes algae to provide food for survival. Green algae often forms in blooms on the surface of waters, such as lakes and ponds with green algae forming the most common type of algae.

Protists have their own kingdom because many species share some characteristics of plants, animals or fungi. Algae belong to the group of plant-like protists. They are autotrophs that fulfill the role of producer in ecosystems because they make their own food via photosynthesis, like plants. Algae are single-celled, plant-like organisms. They are producers because they make their own food through photosynthesis. Ecosystems require a balance of energy to function.

Energy in a food web flows from producers to consumers to decomposers. Consumers and decomposers are heterotrophs. They cannot make their own food and must eat other organisms to obtain energy. Decomposers consume organic materials from dead plants and animals, break them down chemically into simpler molecules and return the molecules to the environment. Plants and other producers such as algae use these nutrients, which include carbon, nitrogen and minerals. Organisms that act as decomposers include fungi, bacteria and other microbes.

Scavengers eat dead animals and are also considered consumers. They assist in the first stage of the decomposition process by tearing apart the remains of other organisms, allowing decomposers greater access to the tissues.