Ecosystems and Food Chains Jeopardy

These living things, including plants and algae, make their own food using sunlight.

What are producers?

This green pigment in plants captures sunlight so the plant can make its own food.

What is chlorophyll?

This process lets plants turn sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into food.

What is photosynthesis?

Because producers make food that other living things eventually eat, they form the starting point of these feeding chains.

What are food chains?

These ocean producers are too small to see without a microscope, yet together they produce much of Earth's oxygen.

What is phytoplankton?

An animal that eats only plants, like a rabbit or a cow, is called this kind of consumer.

What is an herbivore?

An animal that eats only other animals, like a lion or a shark, is called this kind of consumer.

What is a carnivore?

An animal that eats both plants and animals, like a bear or a human, is called this kind of consumer.

What is an omnivore?

A consumer that hunts and eats other animals for food is called this.

What is a predator?

This term describes any living thing that cannot make its own food and must eat other organisms to survive.

What is a consumer?

These living things, such as mushrooms, break down dead plants and animals to get the food they need.

What are decomposers?

This soft, crumbly, dark material is formed when decomposers break down dead leaves and other plant matter.

What is compost?

These tiny living things, too small to see without a microscope, are one of the main types of decomposers found in soil.

What are bacteria?

This familiar decomposer grows from spores, has a cap and stem, and helps break down dead wood in a forest.

What is a mushroom?

These wriggling decomposers break down dead leaves and plant matter as they tunnel through soil.

What are earthworms?

This hot, dry habitat gets very little rain and is home to animals like camels.

What is a desert?

This icy, treeless habitat near the North Pole is home to polar bears and arctic foxes.

What is the tundra?

This warm, wet habitat near the equator is home to more kinds of plants and animals than any other habitat on Earth.

What is a rainforest?

This watery habitat of still, fresh water is home to frogs, turtles, and cattails along its edges.

What is a pond?

This vast, salty habitat covers most of Earth's surface and holds the majority of the planet's animal species.

What is the ocean?

This word describes many connected food chains that show how energy moves through an ecosystem in many directions.

What is a food web?

This is the term for the usable power that gets passed from one level of a food chain to the next, with much of it lost as heat at each step.

What is energy?

This is the term for an animal that gets eaten by another animal in a food chain.

What is prey?

This term describes a species, such as a wolf or a sea otter, whose presence has an unusually large effect on holding an entire food web together.

What is a keystone species?

This term names each step, or level, in a food chain, such as producer, primary consumer, and secondary consumer.

What is a trophic level?

This big cat with black stripes is a top predator in many Asian forests, hunting deer and wild boar.

What is the tiger?

This tiny, eight-legged predator spins a sticky web to trap flying insects for food.

What is a spider?

This slow-moving, big-eyed nocturnal bird is a skilled nighttime predator that swoops silently to catch mice.

What is an owl?

This small, plant-eating woodland mammal freezes still or thumps the ground with its foot to warn others when a predator is near.

What is a rabbit?

In the ocean's food chain, this enormous fish, the largest in the sea, mainly eats plankton despite its size.

What is the whale shark?