Food Web

A food web is a model

A food web shows where organisms in an ecosystem get their food. Models can make things in nature easier to understand because models can represent complex things in a simpler way. If a food web showed every organism in an ecosystem, the food web would be hard to understand. So, each food web shows how some organisms in an ecosystem can get their food.

Arrows show how matter moves

A food web has arrows that point from one organism to another. Each arrow shows the direction that matter moves when one organism eats another organism. An arrow starts from the organism that is eaten. The arrow points to the organism that is doing the eating.

An organism in a food web can have more than one arrow pointing from it. This shows that the organism is eaten by more than one other organism in the food web.

An organism in a food web can also have more than one arrow pointing to it. This shows that the organism eats more than one other organism in the food web.