A food web shows the feeding relationships within an ecosystem and can be divided into 3 parts:
- Producers: plants that use energy from the sun to grow
- Consumers: animals that eat plants or other animals to gain energy to grow
- Decomposers: fungi, bacteria, or invertebrates that consume dead or decaying plant or animal material
In this game, students will assume these roles to see how these three groups can interact in a simplified way. There are many producers. Consumers eat the producers, and decomposers recycle dead producers into nutrients for new producers to grow. Decomposers do not directly turn dead organisms into living organisms as depicted in the game, but they do give the nutrients and create the environment for new organisms.