WE KNOW :
ENVIRONMENT: are all the suroundings where a living thing is.
HABITAT: is a place where living things live in their environment.
and now, we want to know how
living things and NON living things interact with each other in an
environment we called this interaction an ECOSYSTEM.
in an ecosystem, each organism
has its own niche or role to play.
Consider a small puddle at the
back of your home. In it, you may find all sorts of living things, from
microorganisms to insects and plants.
These may depend on non-living
things like water, sunlight...
HOW LIVING THINGS AND NON LIVING
THINGS INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER?
Food chains
All living things need to feed to get energy to grow, move and reproduce.
But what do these living things feed
on? Smaller insects feed on green plants, and bigger animals feed on smaller
ones and so on.
This feeding relationship in an ecosystem is
called a food chain.
Food chains are usually in a
sequence, with an arrow used to show the flow of energy.
The grasshopper eats grass, the frog eats the grasshopper, the snake eats the frog, and the eagle eats the snake.
Below IS A GAME some living things
that can fit into a food chain. Can you build it?
Links of the
Chain
There are
names to help describe each link of the food chain. The names depend mostly on
what the organism eats and how it contributes to the energy of the ecosystem.
This is because they produce energy
for the ecosystem. They do this because they absorb energy from sunlight
through photosynthesis. They also need water and nutrients from the soil, but
plants are the only place where new energy is made.
CONSUMERS
Animals are
called consumers. This is because they cannot make their own food, so they need
to consume (eat) plants and/or animals.
There are 3
groups of consumers.
Animals that
eat only plants. HERBIVORES
Animals that
eat only animals. CARNIVORES
Animals that
eat both animals AND plants. Humans are also omnivores. OMNIVORES.
Decomposers - Decomposers eat decaying matter (like dead plants and animals).
They
help put nutrients back into the soil for plants to eat. Examples of
decomposers are worms, bacteria, and fungi.
