Name: Period:

Biology
1.2 Ecological Interactions

Guiding question: What effect did the reintroduction of wolves have on the food web in Yellowstone
National Park?

Food Webs and Food Chains

-Show feeding relationships

(interactions between living
things while getting food).

-The arrows point to the

individual who is doing the
eating.

Activity: Use the provided cards to create a food web poster.

Questions based on your food web poster:

1. Which living thing(s) do you think will have the largest populations? Why?
Elk, grasses, cayote, aspen trees, bison, plants.

2. Which living things do you think will have the smallest populations? Why?

Winter ticks, snowshoes hare, cowbird.

3. What do you think will happen if one organism were to be removed from the food web?
It would effect everything because all the animals will loose their food.
 4. After the wolf was reintroduced to the food web, what other living things had to compete with the wolf
in order to obtain food? I think it is coyote, elk, winter ticks.

5. If the wolf was able to “beat” the other organisms in the competition of getting food, how would that
change the food web? Use examples. The animals will start decreasing because they will have less food.

Definitions:

1. Autotrophs – living things that use energy from the sun or chemicals to produce “food” so they stay
alive.

2. Heterotrophs – anything living that needs to eat in order to stay alive.

3. Herbivores – living things that eat plants/fruits/seeds only.

4. Carnivores – living things that eat animals only.

5. Omnivores – living things that eat plants/fruit/seeds AND animals.

6. Decomposers – living things that eat living things that have died. They break down dead material and
return it back to the soil.

Questions:

1. Based on your food web poster, which organisms are classified as herbivores?
Its cowbirds, elk, snowshoes hair.

2. Based on your food web poster, which organisms are classified as carnivores?
The gray wolf, grizzly bear, coyote, bison.

3. Based on your food web poster, which organisms are classified as omnivores?
The bison, beavers, winter ticks.

KWL

Considering the guiding question – what effect did the reintroduction of wolves have on the food web in
Yellowstone National Park? – what…

1. Are some things that you can tell me about how the reintroduction of wolves influenced the
interactions of the food web?

2. Are some questions you may have related to this? This could be things you still are confused with
OR questions that came to mind as you learned about this material.