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Wetland Interconnectedness

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The plants and animals that live in a wetland are all connected and depend on each other to survive. The wetland itself is connected to the land and waterways around it.

Useful words

Biodiversity – many different types of plants and animals.

Ecosystem – a community of living things and the environment they live in.

Habitat – place where plants and animals live.

Interdependence – depending on each other; connected.

Niche - the role of an organism within its natural environment, how it gets its energy (food) and how it lives.

Producer - a plant that makes its own energy from the sun through photosynthesis.

Consumer - animals are consumers because they cannot make their own energy.

Food Chain - an arrangement of organisms in a community according to which organism is eaten or eats another. Food chains always start with a plant (or plants).

Food Web - a system of food chains linked to one another.

Within Ō Tū Wharekai

A simple wetland food web is a good way to show interdependence in action:

  • all the animals in this food web depend on each other
  • each part of the food web is affected by the others
  • conservation plays a big part in maintaining wetland ecosystems.

Between wetlands

  • many birds migrate with the seasons between feeding and breeding grounds
  • wetland birds like to migrate via wetlands. They use wetlands as stopping places
  • draining or destroying wetlands upsets migration patterns.

Audio Māori keywords: 


Consequences: If you took away one or two parts of this wetland food web, what do you think would happen? Why?

«Previous
Wetland Treasures
Next»
Wai Water is so Important