Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Research what plants and animals are present in the environment for which you would like to draw a food web. For example, you might select a forest environment with trees, nuts, grass, insects, rabbits, mice, deer, birds, snakes, foxes, eagles and wolves.
List what each animal in the environment eats. For example, mice eat seeds and wolves eat mice, rabbits, deer and foxes.
Draw four horizontal lines across your piece of paper. This divides the food web into five trophic levels. Few environments include more trophic levels than this.
Draw each of the plants in the bottom strip of your piece of paper. These are the primary producers. In this example, you would draw the trees and grass there. Some animals eat only some parts of the trees, such as the nuts, seeds or bark, but because these all come from the tree you do not need to draw them separately.
Draw the primary consumers in a strip above the bottom one. These are the herbivores, or the animals that eat only plants. In this case, you would draw insects, deer, mice and rabbits.
Draw the secondary consumers in the next strip up. This strip includes omnivores and some carnivores. For example, birds are omnivores because they eat insects and seeds, so they go in this strip. Snakes also go here because they are carnivores that eat mice.
Draw tertiary consumers in the next section. These animals eat secondary consumers, and possibly primary consumers as well. The fox goes here because it eats rabbits and birds.
Draw quaternary consumers in the top section. In this food web, the wolf and the eagle are your quaternary consumers. The wolf eats mice, rabbits, foxes and deer. The eagle eats snakes, mice, rabbits and foxes.