Marine Food Webs

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Marine Food Webs

• A complex ecosystem

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A marine food web
Arrows point to where the energy is GOING!
3
Trophic levels

• Label the
• Producer
• 1 consumer
• 2 consumer
• 3 consumer
• Why the
• pyramid shape?

4

• A trophic level is the level at which a
  particular organism feeds in the ecosystem.
• Energy and biomass is lost at each level because
  not all is consumed. About 90 of an organisms
  energy goes into its daily life processes and
  therefore is not passed on.

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Making a food web

• The task is to come up with a food web containing
  all of the following organisms and at least 11
  links.
• Blue shark
• Dinoflagellate
• (phytoplankton)
• Zooplankton
• Eelgrass
• Atlantic Herring

• Bluefin tuna
• Canada goose
• Human
• Mysid shrimp
• Blue Whale

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Symbiotic Relationships

• There are three types of symbiotic relationships
  that can exist between two organisms
• Mutualism
• Both organisms benefit from the
  relationship-
• eg - remora fish with sharks and rays
• - clownfish and coral or sea anemones.

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• When a predators comes to nibble on the anemone,
  the clownfish rushes out and drives it away.
• The clownfish hides in the somewhat poisonous
  anemone tentacles from its predators.

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Remora and shark

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Commensalism

• One organism benefits and the other is unaffected
  (neither harmed or helped).
• Eg. Barnacles on whales or crabs

10
Parasitism

• One organism (the parasite) benefits from the
  host, and the host is harmed.
• Eg. - Ascaris worm in codfish
• - Sea lice on Atlantic Salmon