Food Webs Interactive Simulation

A food web shows how energy and matter flow between organisms in an ecosystem. Producers (plants) capture sunlight; herbivores eat producers; carnivores eat herbivores. Each step loses ~90% of the energy, which is why apex predators are rare. Students can change organism and compare what happens. Use it for biology inquiry with Grades 3–5, Middle School, and High School on a projector or student device.

Standards: NGSS 5-LS2-1, MS-LS2-3

• Why producers always sit at the base of every food web
• Why only ~10% of energy transfers from one trophic level to the next (the 10% rule)
• What happens if a mid-level consumer (e.g. the frog) disappears from the web
• Why apex predators like hawks are less common than the animals they eat
• The difference between a food chain (linear) and a food web (branching)

1. 1Predict how changing organism will affect the visible outcome, then test the prediction.
2. 2Use evidence from the interactive visual to explain the result.

Questions teachers ask