Food Webs as hypothesis generators

Do you think that a hawk eating a rat could have any influence on the Anoles on our islands?  If you cannot think of a way it could have an influence, take a look at the food web drawn at the right for some ideas.


The student's in Mr. Morris' class have helped me construct a simplified food web for Island M, based on observations we had made on the island or nearby.  Here is a great example of one of the food webs a student constructed based on our observations.  From this drawing, you can see that perhaps the rat population really strongly influences anoles, because they not only directly eat anoles, but compete with them for other food sources.

One thing these webs really help us do is generate hypotheses.  In class tomorrow, students will be coming up with predictions based off of several different scenarios.