Parkwise Activity - Exploring the Denali Food Web

Activity 1:
Exploring the Denali Food Web

Students create a food web for Denali National Park and Preserve.

Unit: To Hatch or Not to Hatch?
Guiding Question: What do Golden Eagles eat and where do they fit in the food chain of Denali National Park and Preserve?
Critical Content: The golden eagle's role as a predator in the Denali ecosystem and the type of prey they eat.
Grades: 3-7
Duration: 45 - 60 minutes
Group size: 2 - 3 students
Setting: classroom
Materials: Large sheets of paper, pencils, pens, and rulers. Denali Ecosystem - Who Eats What?, Species list for Denali (pdf), Wildlife Notebook Series (Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game), Golden Eagles in Denali

Before you begin:

Print the Denali Ecosystem - Who Eats What? Save this as a key to compare the student generated food webs.
Print the Species list for Denali (pdf) and use this as a reference for listing species.
Review the Wildlife Notebook Series (Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game), for more information on individual species and their food habits
Review the first section of Golden Eagles in Denali, but do not share the entire fact sheet with the students at this time (students need to brainstorm information in Activity 3: Describing Productivity).

Procedures:

Review with the students the trophic levels of prey, predator and producer, and the terms carnivore, herbivore and omnivore.

As a homework assignment, have students do research to create a list of the species that inhabit Denali National Park, including both plants (general categories, eg. Deciduous trees) and animals.

Students are then to work together in small groups to make a food web of the species in Denali National Park.

First, students in each group combine their lists to create as complete a list as possible.

Arrange the names of the plants and animals on a large sheet of paper. It works well to place the predators near the top, the prey species toward the middle and the plants near the bottom.

Draw arrows from each of the species to all of the other species that it eats.

Once students are satisfied with their webs then give them the Denali Ecosystem sheet to compare their work.

Discussion Questions:

What are herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, detrivores, and what is their role in the ecosystem? What do the terms predator and prey mean?
What is a population? Discuss how the populations of Denali compose the ecosystem of Denali.
What is the first source of energy for an ecosystem? [the sun] How does that energy move through the ecosystem [from the plants through the herbivores, etc.]
How can food determine the number of plants and animals in an ecosystem? What are the foods in the Denali ecosystem? [discuss the trophic levels, and limits on population as a function of populations at the lower trophic levels]
If species lower in the food web can limit the size of populations in the ecosystem because they are food, how can species higher in the food web limit the size of populations? [predation]
What is "carrying capacity?"
What do the golden eagles of Denali eat?
Are golden eagles a prey or a predator species?
Which species in Denali affect the greatest number of other species?

Adaptations:

When the small groups have created their webs, build a web for the whole class that includes all of the connections from each group, and then compare to the Denali Ecosystem - Who Eats What? web.
For younger students, break the species into categories and have students create lists of only the species in that category. Examples could include predators, plants, birds, large mammals, small mammals, herbivores, etc. Place the students who researched the same category into the same small group, and they draw arrows from the species in their category. Compile the information from all the small groups to create one food web for the class.

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