Changing the Ecosystem A food chain is a series of links between plants and animals. It starts with a plant. The next part of the link is a plant eater. When the prairie plants started to die or be replaced with houses and roads, the animals that depended on them lost their food source. So while the farmers produced more food for people, they broke the animals’ food chain and the animals died or had to move. This was a great mistake. We are paying for that mistake today. And, unfortunately, people still keep making that mistake. They keep breaking the food chains. A food chain is part of a bigger system called a food web. That web links the living things in an ecosystem. The herbivores in that system depend on the plants. If the plants are removed, the herbivores cannot survive. Then the carnivores, the animals that eat other animals, lose their food, too. Remove just one kind of plant from an environment and you disrupt the food web. Plow up the land and you destroy the whole system. The problem was there were more and more people and less and less natural habitats. How would the message of this text change if it was written in a problem/solution structure? A) The text would provide a timeline of the issues leading to the changing ecosystem. B) The text would list the causes of the changing ecosystem and effects of the change. C) The text would compare and contrast parts of the ecosystem to show how it is changing. D) The text would provide the reader with a solution(s) to the issue of breaking the food chain.