Activity G10: Food Chains

Great Barrier Island Activity	Teacher Manual P 30 Science Level 4 Making Sense of the Living World Created 15/09/2001	AO4 - Students can use simple food chains to explain the feeding relationships of familiar animals and plants and investigate effects of human intervention on these relationships. SLO - Students will be able to discuss and explain simple food chains available on Great Barrier Island. © Heurisko Ltd www.learnz.org.nz/2001

Read Biodiversity, Wetlands, Brown Teal, and Cats. Food chains show how organisms gain food (energy) from eating each other in a community. This is a diagram of a cow pat food chain. Fungi and worms live in and on the cowpat. Starlings eat the worms and then in turn are eaten by a harrier. Brown teal are omnivores as they eat both plant material and animals. Draw a simple food chain showing the plants and animals a brown teal would eat. The brown teal has no natural predators on Great Barrier Island but introduced predators such as cats can disturb the natural food chain. Draw another food chain with brown teal, introducing cats as the top carnivore (animals which eat other animals). Draw lines to match these sentences correctly Herbivores animals that eat both plants and animals Carnivores animals which eat other animals Omnivores animals which eat plants Describe three ways that humans have interrupted the food chains in wetlands around New Zealand.