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Connected food webs How do coastal wetlands feed connected food webs?

Trace sunlight, detritus, microbes, prey, predators, nursery habitat, disturbance, and monitoring through connected coastal-wetland food webs.

5
lessons
~20 min
to learn
🔬 Science
subject
Adults
level
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What you’ll learn

  1. Energy enters the wetlandExplain how sunlight, producers, tides, and habitat structure introduce and distribute energy in coastal wetland food webs.Food webs begin with production in plants, algae, and phytoplankton, then depend on tidal connections among habitats.
  2. Detritus carries the hidden subsidyTrace how dead plant material, microbes, sediment, and tides transfer energy to invertebrates and estuarine consumers.Decomposition turns plant litter into a major but often hidden route through the wetland web.
  3. Prey support many consumersConnect invertebrates, habitat structure, reefs, seagrass, and shallow water with feeding, refuge, and nursery function.The middle of the web depends on the surfaces and conditions that make prey available to larger consumers.
  4. Predators follow opportunityInterpret how tides, prey pulses, life stages, oxygen, and habitat access shape predator behavior and food-web links.Predators follow changing opportunities rather than a fixed ladder of feeding relationships.
  5. Disturbance changes the menuEvaluate how blooms, storms, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change rearrange food-web pathways.Disturbance can remove, shift, or create links, so recovery must be measured across processes and time.

Questions this course answers

What is the best starting point for tracing a wetland food web?

Food-web pathways begin with production and the physical routes that connect it to consumers.

Put a food-web investigation in a useful order.

The physical setting and producers establish the context before prey, consumers, and links are interpreted.

Why can dead marsh leaves support animals?

Microbial decomposition converts plant material into particles and biomass used by small consumers.

How can one wetland support consumers outside its boundaries?

Food-web subsidies cross habitat boundaries through water movement and animal dispersal.

What makes a habitat useful as a nursery?

Nursery function is a life-cycle process involving growth, survival, resources, and movement.

Match each structure with a likely food-web role.

Different physical structures create different feeding and refuge opportunities.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, How do Wetlands Function and Why are they Valuable?, https://www.epa.gov/wetlands/how-do-wetlands-function-and-why-are-they-valuable
  • NOAA Fisheries, Estuary Habitat, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/habitat-conservation/estuary-habitat
  • NOAA Fisheries, Coastal Wetland Habitat, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/habitat-conservation/coastal-wetland-habitat
  • U.S. Geological Survey, Food web conceptual model, https://www.usgs.gov/publications/food-web-conceptual-model
  • U.S. Geological Survey, Food Web and Invertebrate Ecology Studies in Pacific Coast Estuaries, https://www.usgs.gov/centers/werc/science/food-web-and-invertebrate-ecology-studies-pacific-coast-estuaries
  • National Park Service, Wetlands, Marshes and Swamps, https://www.nps.gov/goga/learn/nature/wetlands.htm
  • National Park Service, Estuaries and Salt Marshes, https://www.nps.gov/caco/learn/nature/estuaries-and-salt-marshes.htm
  • Wikimedia Commons MediaWiki API image records, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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