more about wetlands and food webs

words to know: carnivore, decomposer, detritivore, herbivore, omnivore, primary producer.

comments: In Illinois, certainly one of the most fascinating areas is the Cache River Basin. Here several kinds of wetland habitats occur - floodplain forest, forested swamp, shrub swamp, marsh - that support a great diversity of life.

Floodplain forests occur along streams, are flooded frequently, and have a somewhat lower diversity of species than forests on higher ground. Typical trees in this habitat include silver maple, cottonwood, maple, sycamore, and pumpkin ash.
Swamps are dominated by woody plants and can be divided into forested and shrub swamps. The former is often dominated by bald cypress and water tupelo. Shrub swamps are similar, except that more of the vegetation is present as buttonbush, swamp rose, and other shrubby species.
Marshes are moslty emergent plants that grow with their stems partly in and partly out of the water; these include sedges, American lotus, wild iris, and cattails.

When scientists study the structure and functioning of these habitats, they often determine who-eats-who in the habitat. These relationships are called food webs. In a typical food web, plants are called primary producers becasue they absorb the energy of sunlight and covert it into food for other organisms. Organisms that eat green plants are called herbivores, and those animals that eat other animals are called omnivores. Finally, orgainsms that rely on dead animals or dead plant material are called detritivores or decomposers. Food webs can be quite simple, or exceedingly complex, but are always endlessly fascinating to explore.

construct your own web

1. Draw or find pictures of the organisms mentioned in the story and construct a food web.
2. To construct a food web, draw arrows between an organism that eats another organism, or is eaten by another organism. Connect these organisms with an arrow that runs from the organism being eaten to the one doing the eating. This shows the direction of energy flow in the food web. For example, a deer eats a green plant (plant --> deer). Remember that energy only flows in one direction. An organism (the deer) takes energy from another organism (the green plant).

wetlands & food webs | build a wetland | what you think/what you want to know