Desert Ecosystem - Food Web Project

1. the producers in this food web are the cactus fruit and the flowering plant.

2. the primary consumers in this web are small mammals and insects.

3. the secondary consumers in the food web are the scorpions, rattlesnakes, and lizards.

4. the food chain will be affected more in both ways but it would be affected more if the farmer shoots all the rattlesnakes that he finds because then the lizards, eagles,coyotes, and roadrunners will have nothing to eat, and some of them will go to insects which will then finish if the farmer sprays insecticide on them.

5. if a plant produces a seed that sticks to a coyotes fur to get transported then this relationship is called mutualism, because none of both sides is harmed when the plant leaves the seed on the coyotes fur since both of them are benefiting from this relationship and this is because they are interdepending on each other since the plant is depending on the coyotes to take the seed and the coyotes is depending on the plant to eat.

Food Web Questions

18-1-2010 Food Web

1.a) plants are eaten by plant eaters or primary consumers in this case they are eaten by squirrels and other small rodents, insects, and pronghorn and other gazers.

b) Snakes are eaten by badgers and raptors.

c) Lizards and small reptiles and bats eat insects.

d) Mountain lions are on top of the food web and are not eaten by any other animals.

2. Killing the coyotes have an effect on other organisms in this food web which will be the increasing of pronghorns, other gazers, lizards and other reptiles, and this will have an effect which is a decrease in the amount of insects and primary producers which are plants.

3. The effects on the ecosystem of an increase of the population of mountain lions in the ecosystem will be that there will be a decrease in pronghorns and other gazers which are as well eaten by coyotes and this will also decrease the population of both coyotes and mountain lions since they wouldn't have anything to eat any more.

4. Some of the possible effects that mesquite trees might have on the ecosystem above might be increasing the amount of primary producers which are plants and they start of the food web and this will increase the population of plant eaters or otherwise known as primary consumers, which will cause the increasing of small predators, carnivores and insectivores and this will cause the growth of the amount of large predators which the waste of the animals will increase the amount of mesquite trees and the routine will start again.