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“And don’t forget the sun. The plants get their energy from the sun, or maybe from that heat
lamp there. Either way, the energy has to start somewhere.”
“Look at that butterfly,” Gabriella said, pointing to a beautiful blue-winged creature. “It keeps
returning to those rocks. I bet it is using the rocks to hide, or to lay its eggs or something. What-
ever it is doing there, the butterfly sure is interacting with the rocks.”
“Remember what we learned, Gabriella. Living organisms will interact with both other liv-
ing things and nonliving things in their environment. Just like the ants are using the soil to build
their homes and store their food.”
Jesse nodded his head. “Yep. We could make this display a lot more interesting if we could
add a few frogs and some of those snakes over there!”
Ecosystems Everywhere
Not every environment or food web requires the sun. Deep, deep in the
ocean the sunlight doesn’t reach the bottom of the ocean floor. But a thriving
ecosystem of organisms lives there. The organisms are near hydrothermal vents,
openings in the ocean floor from which mineral-rich and magma-warmed water
enters the ocean. Bacteria living there get their energy from the chemicals in the
water and form the basis of the food chain for the organisms in the area