Food Webs – Understanding What Happened When Wolves Returned to Yellowstone1

Wolves in Yellowstone National Park

In the early twentieth century, humans eliminated wolves from Yellowstone. In the late
twentieth century, humans brought wolves back to Yellowstone. How did these changes in the
wolf population affect the other animals and plants in Yellowstone?

To begin to answer this question, watch the “Ecosystems Video”

(https://www.learner.org/series/the-habitable-planet-a-systems-approach-to-environmental-science/ecosystems/e
cosystems-video/), beginning at 13 minutes and 40 seconds and ending at 22 minutes and 37
seconds. An ecosystem includes the animals, plants and other organisms in an area and their
physical environment.

These graphs summarize recent trends in the numbers of wolves and elk in the Northern Range
in Yellowstone.

1a. Why did the number of elk

decrease after 1995?

The wolves eat elk.

1b. What happened to the bodies of

the thousands of dead elk?

Some were eaten while some likely

decomposed.

2. After 1995, willows grew taller in some parts of Yellowstone. What is one possible
explanation for this trend?

As deer bodies decompose, some of the nutrients in their body are absorbed into the soil.

3a. Beavers use tall willows for food and building dams. Predict the change in the number of
beavers when wolves returned to Yellowstone Park. decreased ___ increased _O_

3b. Explain your reasoning.

As wolves kill deer, some of their carcasses give nutrients to willow trees, providing more
resources to beavers.
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By Drs. Ingrid Waldron and Lori Spindler, Dept Biology, University of Pennsylvania. © 2021. This Student Handout, an alternative Student
Handout for students learning at home without a printer, and the Teacher Preparation Notes with instructional suggestions and background
information are available at https://serendipstudio.org/sci_edu/waldron/#foodweb.
We will return to these questions after you have learned about food chains and food webs.

Food Chains and Food Webs

This figure shows a food chain.

Secondary consumers eat primary Mountain Lion
consumers which eat producers (plants).

Notice that producers are shown at the rabbit

bottom of the food chain. Each level
above that eats organisms from the level
grass
below.

A food chain summarizes a sequence of trophic relationships, where trophic means eating or
nutrition.

4. Write mountain lion, grass, and rabbit in the appropriate blank boxes to show a food chain.

There is another type of food chain that doesn’t begin with living plants.

5. Think about a 100-year-old forest where the leaves have dropped from the trees each fall,
dead branches have fallen, and animals have died each year. You won’t see 100 years of dead
stuff piled up on the ground in the forest. What has happened to all the dead stuff?
Decomposers break them down. Examples would be mushrooms, mold, and other fungi and
bacteria.

Decomposers get their nutrition from dead organic matter. Decomposers include bacteria and
fungi (e.g. mushrooms) which secrete digestive enzymes and absorb digested molecules from
the dead organic matter.

The first flowchart on the right

shows a food chain with
decomposers, and the second
flowchart shows an example from
Yellowstone.

6. If you visited Yellowstone, you

would not notice this food chain.
Why not?

7. Match each item in the top list with the best match or matches from the bottom list.
Producer _d_
Primary consumer _a_ _c_
Secondary consumer _b_ _e_
a. an animal that eats plants

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 b. an organism that consumes primary consumers
c. an organism that consumes producers
d. an organism that makes its own organic molecules from small inorganic
molecules (e.g. uses photosynthesis to make sugars from CO2 and H2O)
e. includes some predators and Protista

In real biological communities, the trophic relationships are much more complex than a simple
food chain. These more complex trophic relationships are summarized in a food web.

This figure shows a small part SC

of a food web. Notice that the
food web contains multiple TO * TO
food chains.

8. Use asterisks (*) to mark the

organisms in one food chain in SC
this food web. PC TO
*
Most of the organisms in this
food web can be classified in PC
one of these trophic levels: PC
● producers
● primary consumers P *P
● secondary consumers.
However, not all organisms fit in a single trophic level. You may have heard of omnivores which
eat both plants and animals. A more general category is a trophic omnivore which is any animal
that eats organisms from more than one trophic level.
9. In the above figure, use one of the following symbols to label each type of organism.
P = Producer (There are 2 of them.)
PC = Primary Consumer (3)
SC = Secondary Consumer (2)
TO = Trophic Omnivore (3; any animal that eats trophic omnivores is a trophic omnivore.)

Trophic Relationships in Yellowstone

Pages 5-7 show the trophic relationships for each organism that will be included in your
Yellowstone food web. To make your food web, complete each step in the procedure below and
check the box before you begin the next step.
A. Your teacher will explain how to get a set of cards or access an electronic equivalent. If you
are using a set of cards, you will need a surface that is approximately 45 cm (1.5 feet) wide
and 60 cm (2 feet) tall for your food web. Draw and label the rectangles shown below on
your lab table, on a large piece of paper, or on six smaller pieces of paper. Leave space for
trophic omnivores between and above the two sets of rectangles.

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B. Find the cards for the producers and dead organic matter in your Yellowstone deck. Put
these cards in the appropriate rectangles.

D.O.M.(Dead Organic Matter), Grasses, Willows, O.F.P(Other Flowering Plants)

C. Find the cards for the primary consumers (which eat only producers) and the decomposers
(which consume only dead organic matter). Put these cards in their rectangles. If you have
your food web set up on a lab table or large piece of paper, draw an arrow to show each
trophic relationship listed on the cards. Otherwise, you can represent each trophic
relationship with an arrow on a strip of paper or with a piece of string.

Primary Cons. : Deer Mice, Beavers, Elk

Decomposers : Bacteria, Fungi

D. Use the remaining cards to put the secondary consumers in their rectangles and the trophic
omnivores in appropriate places outside the rectangles. (Remember that any animal that
eats trophic omnivores is also a trophic omnivore.) Draw an arrow to show each trophic
relationship.

Secondary Cons. : Beetles, Protista, Coyotes

Troph. Omnivores : Grizzly Bears, American Robins, Gray Wolves, Earthworms, Mites,
Nematodes

Your Yellowstone food web may look complex, but a complete Yellowstone food web would be
much more complex.
● Many more types of organisms live in Yellowstone, including more than 1000 different
kinds of plants and more than 1000 different kinds of insects.
● The trophic relationships are more complex than is shown in your food web. For
example, when an elk is killed by a pack of wolves, the wolves eat much of the meat, but
other animals such as bears, coyotes and ravens eat some of the rest, and parts of the
elk become dead organic matter which is consumed by decomposers.
● Some of the trophic relationships shown are much more important than others. For
example, Yellowstone wolves eat many elk and few beavers.

10a. Make the arrow from elk to wolves fatter to represent the importance of this trophic
relationship.
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10b. Draw arrows from the primary consumers and producers to dead organic matter. These
arrows will represent the general point that all or parts of many plants and animals become
dead organic matter which is consumed by decomposers.

11. Use teacher comments to improve your food web, and then take a picture of it to submit.

Even though your food web is incomplete, it can help you to predict
and understand important ecological phenomena.

A trophic cascade occurs when a change in the population of a

predator not only affects its prey population, but also has indirect
effects on another population in the ecosystem. In this flowchart,
each arrow represents a negative effect of one population on the
size of another population.

12. Add a curved arrow with a (+) to show the indirect effect of
wolves on the willow population in this trophic cascade.
13. Explain how changes in the wolf population could produce the following trends in the
number of beaver colonies.
● After wolves were eliminated from Yellowstone, the number of beaver colonies decreased.
● After wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, the number of beaver colonies increased.
(Hint: Beavers use tall willows for food and building dams.)

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 2.1-2.4 m
23-28 cm 1.8-3.3 m
Elk
American Robins Grizzly Bears
Eat: Grasses, willows,
Eat: Earthworms, beetles, other flowering Eat: Other flowering
other flowering plants plants plants (including
berries), elk
Eaten by: Snakes and Eaten by: Gray wolves,
birds of prey (not grizzly bears, coyotes
included in this food web)

<1 mm
1-1.4 m
1.4-2 m
Protista Coyotes
Gray Wolves
Eat: Bacteria Eat: deer mice, elk
Eat: Elk, coyotes, beavers
Eaten by: Nematodes Eaten by: Gray wolves

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 Grasses (including seeds) Dead Organic Matter
<80-400 cm Eaten by: Elk, deer mice Consumed by: Bacteria,
Willows fungi, earthworms

Eaten by: Elk, beavers

58-99 cm (length, excluding tail)

8-10 cm (length, excluding tail)
Beavers
Other flowering plants Eat: Willows Deer Mice
(including berries)
Eaten by: Gray wolves Eat: Grasses; other
Eaten by: American flowering plants
robins, deer mice,
elk, grizzly bears Eaten by: Coyotes

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 0.5-1 mm 5-20 mm
7-35 cm

Mites Beetles
Earthworms
Eat: Nematodes, fungi Eat: Mites
Eat: Dead organic matter,
fungi, bacteria Eaten by: Beetles Eaten by: American
robins
Eaten by: American robins

2-6 µm 0.1-2.5 mm
Fungi
Bacteria Nematodes
Consume: Dead organic
matter Consume: Dead organic Eat: Protista, fungi,
matter bacteria
Eaten by: Earthworms,
mites, nematodes Eaten by: Protista, Eaten by: Mites
nematodes,
earthworms

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