Food Chains & Webs Vocab

FRONT: Autotroph

BACK: An organism that creates its own food using sunlight or chemical energy (e.g., plants, algae).

FRONT: Heterotroph

BACK: An organism that cannot make its own food and must consume other living things to get energy.

FRONT: Producer

BACK: An organism at the first trophic level that makes its own biomass from inorganic sources; the base of any food chain.

FRONT: Consumer

BACK: An organism that obtains energy and nutrients by feeding on the tissues, wastes, or remains of other organisms.

FRONT: Herbivore

BACK: A consumer that eats only plants or photosynthetic organisms.

FRONT: Carnivore

BACK: A consumer that eats only other animals.

FRONT: Omnivore

BACK: A consumer that regularly eats both plants and animals.

FRONT: Apex Predator

BACK: A top-level carnivore at the very end of a food chain that has no natural predators in its ecosystem.

FRONT: Decomposer

BACK: An organism (like a fungus or bacterium) that breaks down dead organic matter, recycling vital nutrients back into the soil.

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Specific Consumer Levels

FRONT: Primary Consumer

BACK: An organism that directly eats producers; always located at the second trophic level (herbivores).

FRONT: Secondary Consumer

BACK: An organism that eats primary consumers; can be a carnivore or an omnivore located at the third trophic level.

FRONT: Tertiary Consumer

BACK: An organism that eats secondary consumers; typically a carnivore at the fourth trophic level.

FRONT: Arrows (in a Food Web)

BACK: Visual pointers indicating the direction of energy flow; they always point from the organism being eaten to the consumer doing the eating.

FRONT: Trophic Level

BACK: The specific feeding position or step that an organism occupies within a food chain or web.

FRONT: Food Chain

BACK: A single, linear sequence that shows how nutrients and energy pass from one organism to another.

FRONT: Food Web

BACK: A complex, interconnected network of multiple food chains showing all feeding relationships in an ecosystem.

FRONT: Biomass

BACK: The total mass of living organisms or organic matter within a given area or trophic level.

FRONT: Ten Percent Rule

BACK: The ecological principle stating that only about 10% of the energy at one trophic level is passed to the next, while 90% is lost as heat.