Introduction

Just as humans rely on a network of goods and services, so too do all other living plants and animals in an ecosystem.

A Miur web (named after naturalist John Muir) shows the relationships between an animal's survival needs, and what isneeded from an animal for other organisms to survive. It goes much further than a food web, showing how the ecosystem interacts as a whole. In a Muir web, each organism has links showing the things that influences the organism, and in turn what the organism influences. Students will create a mini Muir web. 'Activity sheet 1' demonstrates an example of a Muir web. It uses the example of a kangaroo and demonstrates its interactions with other organisms such as dingos, grasslands and a water source.

Activity outline

In this activity students will create a mini Muir web of a native Australian animal of their choosing. It will show the relationships between what that animal needs to survive and what is needed from that animal for other organisms to survive.

To begin, reflect upon what students already know about food webs and ecosystems.

1. Food webs

A food web is a diagram used to show the flow of energy in an ecosystem. Many students think that the arrows in a food web demonstrates 'who eats who', but this is incorrect. The arrow points to where the energy flows when organisms are consumed. For example, if a human eats an ice-cream, the energy from the ice-cream flows to the human, thus the arrow head would point toward the human. For example: ice-cream ---> human. Each link in the food web represents another tropic level, which is an energy level.

2. Ecosystems

Ensure that your students understand that an ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organism in a physical environment. The key to understanding the concept of ecosystems is the realisation that everything is interacting and interconnected!

Research

Students should choose one animal in an Australian ecosystem. To complete their web, students will need to undertake comprehensive research. Their job is to research information about the animal in order to show all the possible links it has within its ecosystem.Students should use the worksheet to help scaffold their research.

Students' research can be divided into two subheadings:

1. What the organism needs.

2. What needs the organism.

Muir web

Ask students to look at the simplified version of the Muir web ‘Activity sheet 1’ for an example of the type of web that they will be creating. Using A3 paper, students can build their web using the following topics:

• Ecosystem requirements of animal

• Food sources of animal

• By-products of animal (dung, shed skin, exoskeleton, etc.)

• Predators

• Impacts animal has on the environment and how this affects other species.

Encourage your students to be as detailed and comprehensive as possible in the creation of their Muir web, where possible listing species names, specific habitat locations and types, and any unique relationships.

If however, there are unknown elements and relationships, students may need to make generalisations based upon what is known about other similar animals (for example, other insect-eating birds may eat flies, so students can make generalisations about insect-eating bird also eating flies, even if it hasn’t been observed). However, students should mark on their web where they have had to make such generalisations.

Closing presentation

Once complete, give each student the opportunity to present their Muir Web. The rest of the group should be encouraged to ask questions about the Muir webs of other students, including:

How important is this species to the ecosystem?
What would happen to it’s ecosystem if this species disappeared from this environment?
What are the threats relevant to this animal?

Extension activity

Question: What trophic level is it in (Level 1: primary producers; Level 2: herbivores; Level 3: predators; Level 4: carnivores or apex predators)?

There are several opportunities for extension:

Students can repeat this activity either looking at one of the other species that featured on their web.
Students take one chain of the web as far as they possibly can, right to the microbiological level.
Students can repeat this activity using themselves as the centre of the web.

Make the connection

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Summary

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