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Life · Guided lesson

Draw a web with transfer arrows

About 13 minutes · 3 reading + 10 practice and checks
Time includes reading, practice, and questions. Extra videos or further study are optional.
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A food-web and carbon-cycle model explaining a fictional ecosystem disturbance, with a supported prediction and an alternative explanation.

Keep your working files in your own notebook or software. Save a private description, checklist, and work link in My Proof.

What to include

  • Classify organism roles and nonliving conditions.
  • Draw all supplied food-to-eater and decomposer links.
  • Separate carbon cycling from energy flow and calculate the supplied fraction.
  • Classify interactions from both partners’ stated effects.
  • Trace a disturbance with an alternative food path.
  • Write a bounded explanation of the supplied counts and complete changed cases.

Review and revise

Use these criteria to check your work and choose what to improve.

  • Method: applies the course-specific rules to the supplied cases with visible intermediate work.
  • Accuracy: results agree with the stated facts, units, boundaries and independent checks.
  • Reasoning: explains why the result follows and identifies a limitation or unresolved question.
  • Transfer: completes changed cases and revises the final project when a relevant assumption changes.
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Before you begin

The idea in everyday life

Meadow M feeding statements: grasshoppers and rabbits eat grass; frogs eat grasshoppers; hawks eat frogs and rabbits. Dead material from all five groups supports soil fungi. For this model, arrows show feeding transfers rather than “chases.”

The idea

In a food web, draw an arrow from the food to the eater: it shows the direction of energy transfer through feeding. A web includes multiple paths; a chain follows only one path. An organism can feed on more than one level, so do not force every species into a single permanent rung.

Follow along

Draw a web with transfer arrows — worked practice

In a food web, draw an arrow from the food to the eater: it shows the direction of energy transfer through feeding. A web includes multiple paths; a chain follows only one path. An organism can feed on more than one level, so do not force every species into a single permanent rung.

Meadow M feeding statements: grasshoppers and rabbits eat grass; frogs eat grasshoppers; hawks eat frogs and rabbits. Dead material from all five groups supports soil fungi. For this model, arrows show feeding transfers rather than “chases.”

  1. 1. 1. Translate

    Convert every eating statement into a food-to-eater arrow.

    You should see: Grass→grasshopper, grass→rabbit, grasshopper→frog, frog→hawk, rabbit→hawk.

  2. 2. 2. Add

    Represent dead-material transfers without treating fungi as hunters.

    You should see: Dead material from each group→fungi.

  3. 3. 3. Trace

    Name two distinct energy paths to hawks.

    You should see: Grass→rabbit→hawk and grass→grasshopper→frog→hawk.

  4. 4. 4. Audit

    Check arrow direction against one sentence.

    You should see: “Hawk eats rabbit” gives rabbit→hawk, not hawk→rabbit.

Now change one thing

Add a bird that eats grasshoppers and is eaten by hawks. Enter the middle organism in grass→grasshopper→___→hawk.

Your work

What to finish

A food web with five feeding arrows, decomposer links and two traced chains.

Common mistake

Watch for this

A feeding arrow identifies a direction and relationship. The amount transferred depends on additional measurements and assumptions.

How can I tell I understand it?

Add a changed feeding path without reversing the transfer convention.

Try 3 questions

Quick knowledge check

Answer all 3 questions. Get at least 2 right and the lesson completes automatically.

Not yet passed

You’ll get an explanation for each answer. Signed in? Your results save to your account.

1What arrow represents a frog eating a grasshopper?
2Why is this model a web rather than one chain?
3Does an arrow establish a precise transfer amount?
0 of 3 answeredApply the lesson to a short question, then review the explanation.
2
Finish this lesson

Pass the check. We’ll save the progress.

Answer all 3 questions above and get at least 2 right. You can review the explanations and try again.

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Sources and further reading

Explore the references behind this lesson.

OpenStax: ecosystem energy and food webs
Source & access notes · checked 2026-10-01

Web open/search showed the official page, its topic heading and relevant concept description. This is a content/source check, not a provider endorsement.

Access: Official page retrieved with the web reader on 2026-10-01; interactive tools and videos were not certified by retrieval.

Reuse: Original fictional teaching cases, calculations, questions and examples; link and short factual paraphrase only. No copied source exercises or illustrations.

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