A New Panel at High Ridge
The High Ridge mountain trail crosses an open meadow before reaching a rocky rest stop. A trail crew is designing a panel about the animals visitors may see there. The panel must do more than name the animals. It must help visitors follow the energy in an animal’s food back to its earlier source. The crew collects feeding observations and science notes before choosing a design.
During several visits, observers watch ground squirrels eat grass leaves and grass seeds. They see grasshoppers chew grass leaves. Robins catch and eat grasshoppers. On another visit, a hawk catches and eats a ground squirrel. These observations describe some feeding links in this meadow. They are not a complete list of everything each animal eats. The crew will build models of the particular links recorded here.
The crew’s plant notes explain that green plants use light from the sun to make sugars. Energy from the light becomes stored energy in the food the plants make. Some of that food is stored in seeds. Roots take in water and materials from soil, but those materials are not the sunlight energy used to make food. A seed still contains stored food energy when it is carried into a shaded place.
The animal notes explain that eating provides animals with food containing stored energy. Animals use food energy for movement, growth, repairing their bodies, and keeping warm. For example, a ground squirrel uses energy while running between rocks and while growing larger. A robin uses energy to repair an injured wing. A hawk uses energy to keep its body warm while resting on a cold morning. The animals in this report do not make food from sunlight.
The designers may use boxes, labels, and arrows. Each arrow must show the direction that energy passes, not which animal is chasing another. The crew has not measured how much energy passes along any feeding link. Visitors should be able to understand the model without mistaking an arrow for an animal’s path across the meadow.