Download Food Web activity guidance

Rain forest food webs
Requirements:
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Food web card sheets, printed out
A large clear surface and means of fixing the cards to it (this could be a bulletin board and
pins, or a large piece of paper and ‘blu-tak’ or repositionable glue)
String/coloured yarn and some means of fixing it to the surface (pins, ‘blu-tak’ or sticky tape
as appropriate)
Activity:
(Optional) Each student gets a card about an organism, and makes a drawing of the creature shown
on their card.
Working together, students arrange the cards or pictures into a food web. First the cards need
sorting into three rows, plants, herbivores and carnivores. When an animal eats both plants AND
other animals, it should be added to the carnivore layer. The first two rows, plants and herbivores,
can be stuck down. Using string, connect species on the basis of their eating relationships.
 
 
Now add the next layer. This might be a bit more complicated, as some carnivores may eat other
carnivores as well as herbivores… this is a useful discussion point, helping the students understand
the complexity of natural systems. One option might be to add another layer to the food web…
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   
 
 
You’ve now made a food web.
Further activity:
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Remove one species from the food web, and consider the consequences of this change for
the rest of the web. Which species have less to eat? (pick out the strings connected to the
removed species from higher up). What will they eat instead?
If the removed species came from a higher layer, which species will experience less
predation? (pick out the strings connecting from the removed species to lower layers).
What might that mean?
This helps students understand the complexity of the food web and its relative fragility, especially
for ‘keystone species’ – which aren’t necessarily the most ‘charismatic’ ones.