Food Webs and Energy Flow

A food web is a group of interacting food chains. Food webs distribute the sun’s energy through an ecosystem. 

A food chain begins when plants convert energy from the sun into food. This energy then passes into animals that consume these plants. When animals eat other animals, this energy passes further down the chain. But nature isn’t this simple, nor are food chains. 

In fact, food chains interact in complex ways to form food webs—a system of related food chains. Organisms rely on food webs to efficiently distribute the sun’s energy through an ecosystem. Use this food chain to answer the questions about how it distributes the sun’s energy from one organism to another.