Ecology Vocabulary
Use vocabulary for feeding relationships and ecological roles — producer, consumer, predator, prey, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, decomposer, food chain, food web, nutrient cycle — and describe how energy and matter flow through ecosystems using these terms
What a learner can do afterwards
- Construct a food chain correctly using producer, consumer, predator, and prey in the right positions
- Distinguish between herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore with correct examples from a given ecosystem
- Explain what a decomposer does and why it matters, using the correct vocabulary
The lesson
Every living thing has a role in getting energy. A producer makes its own food. Plants are producers: they use sunlight to make food in their leaves. A consumer cannot make its own food, so it eats other living things to get energy.
Consumers get more specific names based on what they eat. A herbivore eats only plants, like a deer. A carnivore eats only other animals, like a lion. An omnivore eats both plants and animals, like a raccoon.
When a leaf falls and dies, a decomposer breaks it down. Mushrooms and tiny bacteria in the soil are decomposers. They turn dead leaves and animals back into nutrients that plants can use to grow again.
A food chain is one straight line of eating, like grass to rabbit to fox. Most animals eat more than one thing, so many food chains link into a food web. When decomposers return nutrients to the soil, that whole loop is called a nutrient cycle.
Energy flows from producer to consumer to predator, and decomposers return everything to the soil so the cycle can start again.
Watch it
Where it sits
Learn first
Nothing; this is a starting point.
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.