Zebra Mussels
...amination of water (pollution, salt, etc.), space in the ecosystem, depth of water, and oxygen in water. 3. 70 kJ of that energy is transferred to the zebra mussel because they remove these microscopic organisms, thus they eat them in whole and ingest all of their energy. 4. The zebra mussel is a producer and a consumer because goby, crayfish, and drum consume it, and it consumes bacteria, algae, and phytoplankton. It occupies the 5. Since catfish consume the zebra mussels, they would also consume the pollutants that are inside of the zebra mussels. In turn, many catfish would die and the whole food web would be affected. Firstly, the population frogs may increase at first since the catfish would not be consuming them. In turn, the other animals that eat the frogs (loons, common goldeneyes, insects, and drums) would increase in population because there would be more frogs available to them since catfish would not be consuming them. The population of insects, however, may just remain equal since insects feed off of frogs and frogs eat insects. Secondly, since loons, common goldeneyes and zooplankton eat catfish, they too would be contaminated by pollutants and may die off, therefore affecting the animals that they eat or are eaten by. As a result of the decrease of catfish, these animals may decrease in number because of lack of food. It would result in them having to eat more of the other organisms they feed off, this also decreasing the number of those animals. In conclusion, it is evident that every organism plays an essential role in the food web, and once this is disturbed by a drastic decrease of an organism, the whole food web is altered, since every organism feeds off one another. 6. (On graph paper) 7. This could cause many social and economical impacts including social impacts such as an unpleasant odour from mussels being clogged in pipelines. Also, in order to unclog the pipelines, workers may have to go i...