Draw a food web

Content

To step
Part 1 of 3: Setting up your web
Part 2 of 3: Mapping your original web
Part 3 of 3: Adding the final web details
Tips
Warnings
Necessities

Creating a food web is a really great way to learn more about how organisms and animals live in their natural habitat. While a food chain shows how ecosystems function in a linear way, a food web is a more visual approach in which multiple animals are linked together. To create a food web, write down the primary producers, herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores for the chosen habitat. Connect them with arrows showing predator as well as prey. The final product can look like a real web or a map. It can be difficult to do this, so don't worry! If you're doing this for a grade, make sure you're doing your best for it. Don't work too hard or you could make mistakes. Make sure to remember all of this. It may serve you well one day, so don't forget it.

To step

Part 1 of 3: Setting up your web

Choose a particular food web habitat. It's just not possible to list all the animals, plants, or organisms around the world, so it can be super helpful to focus on one type of habitat. Your teacher can assign you a particular habitat to create a food web about it. Otherwise, you could choose a piece of nature near your hometown, such as a lake, forest, creek, beach, river or field!
- For example, for a wider habitat you could decide to focus on places with water or desert. By refining the habitat for location, such as the Naardermeer near Naarden, it can be even easier to create a simple food web.
List organisms in the habitat. Grab a piece of paper and brainstorm a long list of every organism you can think of living in the chosen habitat. Includes everything from big to small creatures and even some plants! It can be very useful to look in a scientific book that focuses on the relevant living environment.
- It's okay if your list doesn't include every creature that lives in the chosen habitat. For example, if you have 30 minutes to create the food web, spend up to five minutes making this first list.
- For example, if you study a dry desert, you can mention lizards, cacti, snakes and spiders.
- If you study the vast sea, you can mention fish, sharks and even plankton!
Buy a very large piece of paper to make your food web! Because food webs are not linear, they can take up quite a lot of space depending on the number of animals and plants you include. Choose a sheet of paper with plenty of room for names and maybe even illustrations. You can also use a computer drawing program to create your web.
- If you run out of space on your sheet of paper while creating your web, you can reduce the size of your font or even write on the back of the page.
Name your food web. At the top of your food web, write the title in large font. The title should be a good description of your entire food web. A good idea would be to name the type of habitat you are studying.
- For example, you can title your work "Desert Food Web". You can also go for "A Circle of Life in the Sea" or "A Jungle Food Web".
Decide whether you want to name, image, or do both of the organisms. You must use one uniform identification system for your food web. You could add small images, but it will take more time to create them. On the other hand, simply naming the organism's normal or scientific name would also be fine.
- For example, a barn owl in your map may also be identified by the scientific name "Tytonidae".

Part 2 of 3: Mapping your original web

List all your producers on the page. A primary producer is an organism that makes its own nutrients by processing sunlight or chemical energy. They are the building blocks of any food chain or web. Separate the producers on the page so that they don't touch.
- For example, if you draw a desert food web, you can include cacti as a producer. Cacti survive by using photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy.
- Another name for primary producers is ecosystems are autotrophic organisms.
- Some like to put the primary producers at the bottom of the page to create a visual "foundation" for their web. But this really is not necessary. You can place the producers anywhere on the page, as long as you leave some space between them.
Put the primary consumers on the page. This is the next stage of your food web. Primary consumers are creatures that feed and prey on producers. These are always herbivores, also called herbivores. Just as with the producers, try to come up with several primary consumers.
- Check your initial organism list to identify potential primary consumers. You may also ask yourself, "What creature would the producers eat that I listed?"
- For example, in a desert food web, the cacti and grass (both producers) could be eaten by grasshoppers (primary consumer).
- Since a food web shouldn't actually be displayed as a list, the exact placement of each group of organisms is not as important as leaving enough space to draw arrows between them.
Add the secondary consumers. These are animals that are carnivorous carnivores or meat and herbivorous omnivores. Check your list when selecting these creatures and then add them anywhere on the page.
- For example, in a desert food web, a rat can be a secondary consumer. Rats are omnivores that can eat grass as well as grasshoppers.

Part 3 of 3: Adding the final web details

Add the tertiary and further consumers. These are creatures preying on the secondary consumers, primary consumers and producers. They may not eat animals from all three categories, but they must eat secondary consumers to be considered tertiary. Furthermore, you can add animals that hunt tertiary consumers, and so on.
- You can add as many levels or layers to your food web as you want. The animals that are the last predators, almost always carnivores, are considered the alpha predators of your web.
- For example, in a desert food web, a snake could be a tertiary consumer. Snakes hunt rats.A hawk can be a quaternary consumer because it hunts snakes.
- If you want your web to look more like a pyramid, then you should start with producers on one side of the page and end with predators on the other.
Make it more complicated by adding detritivores or reducers. These are all beings that feed on dead organisms, completing the final chain of life and energy transfer. A detritivore, such as a worm, actually eats dead animals. A reducer, such as bacteria, helps to completely break down a dead creature's carcass.
- It is important to note that reducers usually complete work that is invisible to the naked eye. However, they are still a critical part of the food web system.
- These organisms can be placed anywhere on the page.
Draw arrows between organisms that indicate the transfer of energy. This is when your web really starts to look like a web. Create a series of arrows connecting predator and prey. The arrow must start with the animal being eaten and move to the animal that is eating. Each animal or organism can have multiple arrows going from or to it.
- For example, in a desert food web, you start one arrow at the grass and connect it to the grasshoppers. You should start another arrow on the grass and connect that one to the rats too.
- This is an important difference between a food web and a food chain. A food web is a bit more chaotic, as it can show multiple different arrows between creatures. Your final web will not be linear.
- You can also color-code the arrows in a larger web. For example, color the "plant-eaten-by-animal-arrows" in green, and the "animal-eaten-by-animal-arrows" in red.
- If you're digitally drawing your food web, you may need to use a shape tool to make arrows.

Tips

Not all food webs from the same habitat will be alike. Your web will be unique depending on which animals or organisms you want to display.

Warnings

If you're making your web on paper, it might be helpful to sketch in pencil first. This way you can erase any mistakes you made with the arrows and correct them without any problems.