You have designed plants, and you have designed animals, but isolated species are found only in museums and zoos. You cannot really know the fish without the river, or the eagle without the huge sky. Just so, your creatures cannot be really known unless you examine the context in which they live. The songs of their lives are all motifs in the many-voiced music of their worlds. Let us try and put them into environments in which they interact together.

To do this, you will be giving copies of your plant and animal images to the other members of your exploratory team. When you made water plants and water animals, you chose as many biomes as you have team members (two explorers = two biomes, three explorers = three biomes): Now we will put the biomes together.

I hope that the diagram below will help to explain what we will do:

Each person should choose ONE of the biomes that you have been working with.

Example:    Jenny chooses the rocky shore line environment.
                   Jose chooses the surface community in the open ocean.
                   Mike chooses the deep, clear tropical waters.

Now look at this chart. Jenny will work with all rocky shore plants and animals, the ones that she made, the ones that Jose made, and the ones that Mike made. She will give her Open Ocean Plants and Animals to Jose, and her Tropical Ocean plants and animals to Mike. Then each person will make a page describing his/her biome.

Person	Biome	Water Plants	Water Animals		The Water Ecology Page
Jenny	Shore	Shore P	ShoreA	Jenny will do Shore Biome using these files	Shore P	ShoreA
	Ocean	Ocean P	Ocean A		Shore P	ShoreA
	Tropical	Tropical P	Tropical A		Shore P	ShoreA
Jose	Shore	Shore P	ShoreA	Jose will do Open Ocean Biome using these files	Ocean P	Ocean A
	Ocean	Ocean P	Ocean A		Ocean P	Ocean A
	Tropical	Tropical P	Tropical A		Ocean P	Ocean A
Mike	Shore	Shore P	ShoreA	Mike will do Tropical Waters Biome using these files	Ocean P	Ocean A
	Ocean	Ocean P	Ocean A		Tropical P	Tropical A
	Tropical	Tropical P	Tropical A		Tropical P	Tropical A

Part One: Collect the Images and Information for the Plants and Animals in Your Biome.

It might be a good idea if each member of your group printed out the descriptions of his/her animals and plants.

You will need copies of the image files, too.

You will need to make an under water scene similar to (or better than!) the one at the top of this page. This will allow you to visualize your underwater environment while doing amazing things with your drawing program!

Part Two: Divide the organisms into

• Primary Producers: make their own food from chemicals and energy
• Primary Consumers: eat the primary producers: cannot make food
• Secondary Consumers: eat smaller predators

These relationships are called the food chain. Sometimes there is another layer of predators but this is rare. Five levels is the maximum length of food chain that we see on earth.
In very simple or very challenging areas, there may be only two levels.

Now describe the animals in each level of your food chain. See the model in Rubric 7.

Part Three: Draw a Food Pyramid or Food Chain.

Go to the Biomes section to see examples of food pyramids.

Add a short explanation to the diagram of your pyramid.

Part Four: Draw an Energy Pyramid.

This shows what happens to the energy in your biome.

The basic rule is that every time you go up a level in a food chain, only a small percentage of the energy that is passed up becomes biomass (the bodies) at the next level.

Visit these pages!

The Energy Pyramid

© 1999. Elizabeth Anne Viau. All rights reserved. This material may be used by individuals for instructional purposes but not sold. Please inform the author if you use it at eviau@earthlink.net.