The Rocky Coast Ecosystem

ECOSYSTEMS

• The Coral Reef Ecosystem
• The Rocky Coast Ecosystem

Eat and Be Eaten

As organisms eat other organisms, energy moves through an ecosystem.

Sunlight is the source of energy that fuels most of the earth's ecosystems. Plants convert solar energy to food, which is then transferred among the ecosystem's organisms. This network of interactions is called a food web.

Complex. . . Interactive. . . Dynamic

Like other complex systems, such as your body, ecosystems:

• have interacting parts
• use energy and produce wastes
• can malfunction and cease to exist
• are influenced by other systems.

A marine ecosystem has organisms and an environment. . . requires energy. . . produces food. . . recycles wastes.

On display in this exhibit are living models of two North American ecosystems. Like marine ecosystems in nature they have:

• organisms: plants, animals, and microbes
• environmental parts: light, temperature, waves, currents, tides, and salt

water and they require energy, produce food, and recycle wastes.

Food Webs

Because plants possess the ability to produce their own food, they are the first link in most food chains. Because most marine organisms eat many different kinds of food, many food chains overlap and interconnect, forming food webs. Although many organisms have food preferences, they will eat a wide variety of things if their preference isn't available. And no food source is overlooked: dead organisms are eaten by scavengers and decomposers get the remains.

A general food chain:

• sunlight
• producers consumers
• upwelling decomposers

Our Ecosystems:

• The Coral Reef Ecosystem
• The Rocky Coast Ecosystem