Interactive Ecosystem Diagram
Drag through a living meadow — from the sunlight that powers it to the bacteria that recycle it. Tap any organism, trace the food chain, and watch the whole scene breathe.
One ecosystem, eighteen stories
Every organism, every rock and every ray of light in this scene is tappable. Zoom into the soil, patrol with the hawk, or switch on the energy trace to watch the food chain light up.
DRAG TO PAN · SCROLL / PINCH TO ZOOM · TAP ANY PART FOR FIELD NOTES
Four ways into the scene
The diagram rewards curiosity. Here's how to get the most out of it, whether you have thirty seconds or a whole class period.
Tap anything
Fox, pond, mushroom, even the buried soil — every part opens a field-notes card with its role, its food-web links and one wild fact.
Drag & zoom
Drag to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom. Get close enough to spot root hairs, fungal threads and the bacteria clusters at work.
Trace the energy
Switch on Trace energy and watch arrows carry sunlight through grass, rabbit and fox — with the famous 10% rule playing out in numbers.
Make it live
Press Animate: the hawk patrols the sky, the fish grazes the algae, grass sways and spores drift off the fungi.
Three rules run the whole scene
Every ecosystem on Earth — meadow, reef or rainforest — follows the same three energy rules. This diagram just makes them visible.
Energy enters once
Photosynthesis is the only door energy uses to enter this world. Producers hold the key; everything else lives on what they let in.
Energy climbs, and leaks
Roughly a tenth of the energy in one trophic level reaches the next — the rest leaves as heat. That's why food chains stay short and predators stay rare.
Nutrients loop back
Energy flows one way and is gone, but matter isn't. Decomposers unlock the nutrients trapped in dead things and hand them back to the producers.
What each zone is telling you
The scene is drawn as a cross-section — sky above ground, soil below — so you can see every layer of the ecosystem at once. Read it top to bottom.
Of every 100 units of energy the meadow's plants store, about 10 reach the rabbit, 1 the fox and 0.1 the hawk. The other ~90% at each step leaves the chain as heat — which is why the hawk is the rarest thing in the scene.
The sky — where energy enters
Sunlight, air and weather set the conditions for everything below. The hawk patrols here at the top of the chain — nothing in this scene hunts it.
The canopy — the ecosystem's engine
The oak's leaves are solar panels. They turn light, water and carbon dioxide into the sugars that feed nearly every other living thing here.
The meadow — producers at work
Grass and wildflowers capture light at ground level. The rabbit grazes the grass; the butterfly trades pollination for nectar among the flowers.
The pond — a world inside a world
Algae photosynthesise underwater, fish graze the algae, and the pond shelters them all — proof that a whole ecosystem can sit inside another one.
The floor — where things fall
Dead leaves collect at the base of the tree. Fungi thread through them and fruit as mushrooms — the recycling plant of the scene.
The underground — the loop closes
Roots drink recycled nutrients while worms, beetles and bacteria dismantle the dead. What they release today becomes next spring's grass.
Questions, answered
Everything students, teachers and the plainly curious usually ask about this diagram — from how to use it to how close it sticks to reality.
How do I use the interactive ecosystem diagram?+
Tap any part of the scene — animal, plant, pond, sun or soil — to open its field notes: what it does, what it eats or feeds, and a quick fact. Drag to look around, zoom with scroll or pinch, and use the pills to toggle labels, animation or the energy-flow trace. The list on the right lets you jump straight to any of the 18 parts.
Is this what a real ecosystem actually looks like?+
It's a stylised cross-section, not a photograph. A real temperate meadow holds hundreds of species and a tangled food web, with everything overlapping in space and time. We simplified it to one clear chain and a handful of recognisable members so the flow of energy is easy to see and click — the structure, not the crowding, is what's realistic.
What does the Trace energy button show?+
It draws the path energy takes: sunlight into grass, algae and the oak; plants into rabbit and fish; rabbit into fox; fox into hawk. You also see the decomposer loop returning nutrients to the roots. The numbers matter — only about 10% of the energy survives each step up, and none of it ever flows backwards.
What's the difference between a food chain and a food web?+
A food chain is one single thread — grass to rabbit to fox. A food web is every thread in the ecosystem tangled together: the fox also eats beetles, the hawk also takes fish, and the rabbit feeds more than one hunter. This diagram follows one chain through the web to keep the story readable.
Why are decomposers at the bottom of the diagram?+
Because that's where things fall. Fungi, worms, beetles and bacteria break dead leaves and animals into mineral nutrients and return them to the soil, where roots collect them and the whole cycle restarts. Without decomposers, nutrients would stay locked in dead matter and the meadow would slowly starve.
Which parts of the scene are biotic and which are abiotic?+
Biotic means living: the oak, grass, wildflowers, algae, rabbit, butterfly, fish, fox, hawk, fungi, worm, beetle and bacteria. Abiotic means non-living: the sunlight, the air, the water in the pond, and the soil's minerals. An ecosystem is both together — remove either half and it collapses.
Does the tool save or upload anything?+
No. The whole diagram runs in your browser. Nothing you click, zoom or trace is sent to a server, logged, or stored.
Can I use this on my phone or tablet?+
Yes. Tapping selects a part, dragging pans the view, and pinching zooms in or out — and the full-screen button gives the scene your whole display. It works the same with touch as with a mouse.
Is the interactive ecosystem diagram free?+
Completely free — no account, no sign-up, no watermark and no limit on how much you explore.