What is the Food Chain?

Energy goes from one plant or animal to another. A food chain shows how this energy moves. Each time an animal gets eaten its energy is passed onto the animal that eats it. The food chain usually ends with an animal with no natural predators, like you and me.  The food chain is an important part of biodiversity because it keeps ecosystems in balance. If one part of the food chain becomes extinct, it can affect all the other plants and animals.

There are four main parts of the food chain. They are the sun, the producers, the consumers and the decomposers.
 

Sun The sun is essential to food chains because the sun makes the energy that the plants absorb.

Producers Producers are plants that absorb the sun’s light and turn it into food and then into energy. This process is called photosynthesis. If an animal eats the producer, it will get the energy from the plant.

Consumers Consumers are all living things that cannot produce their own food. All animals are consumers. Consumers include herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, scavengers and parasites. Herbivores eat the plants, carnivores eat meat, omnivores (like most humans) eat both plants and meat, scavengers eat the dead bodies of animals and parasites live off of the bodies of other living animals.

Decomposers Decomposers are mostly fungi and bacteria. They break up the dead bodies of animals and plants and recycle the nutrients back into the air, water and soil.

Food Chain Examples The algae absorbs the sunlight and makes the energy. Shrimp eat the algae getting the energy. The shrimp might end up being your dinner. Another example of a simple food chain: a raspberry bush absorbs the sunlight and makes the energy. You pick a raspberry and eat it. You get the energy from the raspberry bush.

Often times food chains link together and form complex food webs. A food web shows how all living things depend on each other.

What are the Threats to the Food Chain?

 Any threat to the food chain is a threat to the environment’s biodiversity. The food chain helps keep animal populations in balance. However, if something happens to increase or decrease one of the links in the food chain, that balance is disrupted. If one animal becomes endangered, it puts all the animals above it at risk.

Some of the threats are natural such as wildfires, hurricanes, tornados and floods. However, some of the biggest threats to the food chain are caused by humans. These threats include overhunting, overfishing, logging, deforestation for farming, development, spraying of pesticides and pollution. 
 

Where is the Food Chain in Danger?

The food chain is endangered anywhere humans have interfered with the natural environment.
                                
A recent study shows that the overfishing of large sharks is damaging the food chain along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Canadian and American scientists say sharks are being killed in great numbers for their meat and fins. Now, not enough sharks are around to eat the cownose ray. The ray’s population has exploded and they have eaten up the shellfish to the point where it has hurt commercial fishing.

Another example comes from Malawi, Africa. About 20 years ago, the farmers there complained that leopards were killing their animals. The government agreed to kill most of the leopards. However, the leopards were the main hunters of baboons. Without the leopards, the baboon population had grown out of control. There were so many baboons, they couldn’t find enough food. The baboons ended up attacking the farmers’ crops and causing more damage than the leopards ever did.  

Many of us interfere with the natural environment in our own backyards. Just by cutting our lawns and spraying pesticides we are killing off many insects and small animals. 

How Can You Help?

It’s up to us to take care of the environment and try not to disrupt the natural food chain. If we don’t act responsibly, animals will start disappearing. We can all protect animals by respecting them in their natural habitats.

Here are some ways to help the food chain and biodiversity:

• Leave wild plants and animals where they are.
• Do not feed wild animals. They become dependent on humans for food and may starve when no humans are around.
• Obey fishing and hunting laws. Often times there are limits to when you can hunt a certain animal and how many animals can be killed.
• Do not release fish from your aquarium into a lake or pond. Your fish could upset the ecosystem.
• Don’t buy any exotic pets. They are hard to keep alive and belong in their natural habitat.
• Don’t waste food or water.
• Throw your trash in the waste basket, not on the ground.
• Ask your school or club to do something for the environment. Organize a clean up day on the beach or along the river.
• Plant some trees. Trees are the home to many animals.