How Nature Works in Harmony
Producers, consumers, and who eats what
Sort the living things in a forest into producers and consumers.
Among the interactions between living things, the most obvious is food. Activity 12.5 works through a forest ecosystem.
Study the forest picture and find the organisms in Table 12.4: deer, hare, vulture, Bengal fox, bird (shikra), squirrel, mouse, mushroom and tree. Use the internet or your school library to find out what each one eats.
For each, record whether it carries out photosynthesis, and whether it eats only plants (and plant products), only animals, or both. The book fills two rows for you: the deer doesn't photosynthesise and eats grass and leaves, plants only; the tree does photosynthesise.
How do plants get food? They make their own, by photosynthesis. So they are called producers, or autotrophs (auto = self, troph = food).
Organisms that can't make their own food and depend on others for it are consumers, or heterotrophs (hetero = other). Everything in Table 12.4 except the tree is a heterotroph, even the mushroom, which can't photosynthesise.
Consumers are sorted by what they eat:
| Group | Eats | Book's examples |
|---|---|---|
| herbivores | only plants | deer, hare |
| carnivores | only animals | leopard |
| omnivores | plants and animals | crows, foxes, mice |
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