Energy Pyramid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_pyramid CA GR.9-12 6.f.

For the ecosystem to function energy must be available and it must be transferred. Why? Because of the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. The First Law states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can be converted from one form to another. The Second Law states that everything is running downhill or, more formally, everything in the universe is going from a more organized state to a less organized one. To illustrate these laws, let's consider a car with a full tank of gasoline. The gasoline is burnt, the car goes, and the gasoline is broken down into gases and heat, but, following the First Law, the total amount of energy is constant although now it is in a different form, namely heat. Heat is a very disorganized form of energy. However, what of the Second Law? It, too, has been operating. Life exists because it has found a way to reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics, if only temporarily, but, to do this, living things need constantly to invest energy. There is, however, only one energy source available to earths organisms and that is the sun. Photosynthesis is the only means available to use this source energy. Autotrophs are organisms that produce their own food through photosynthesis. Heterotrophs are organisms that consume autotrophs and use the energy of their bodies to survive. The transfer of energy from the autotrophs to the heterotrophs always involves the conversion of some of the energy into heat. Only a small percentage of the energy of the autotrophs is actually used. For example, a flock of birds descends on a bush and eats its berries, but 98% of what is eaten is excreted as water and other waste or converted to energy. In addition, the bird becomes food for other organisms. Any ecosystem can be viewed as consisting of producers (the autotrophs) and consumers (heterotrophs). These concepts are the bases of the ECOSYSTEM PYRAMID OF ENERGY.

The autotrophs form the basis of the pyramid and are the primary producers. The next level is heterotrophs that consume the autotrophs and are the primary consumers. Generally, 10% of the energy is based from one level to the next.

Decomposers that break down the remains of plants and animals also figure into pyramid of energy. Detritus food chains transform litter back into nutrients. Each level in an energy pyramid is called a trophic level and all transfers of energy involve the

conversion of some energy into heat. This means that the energy of each higher trophic level is smaller than the one below it. All energy pyramids are broadest at the base. There are also PYRAMIDS OF NUMBERS that tell you the actual numbers of organisms at various levels and PYRAMIDS OFBIOMASS are related to the amount of chemical energy. See example below:

FOOD WEBS illustrate the complex interaction of organisms in the various pyramids. The movement of energy from one trophic level to the next or through the food web is shown in the ENERGY-FLOW DIAGRAM.

Photosynthesis limits productivity of the ecosystem. The net primary production is the gross production minus the energy and carbon compounds lost by plant respiration. The factors that limit primary productivity are temperature and water, mineral nutrients, light and carbon dioxide. Definitions:
1. Autotrophs - Organisms that produce their own food through photosynthesis. 2. Consumers - Organisms that consume other organisms for food. 3. Decomposers - Organisms that break down the remains of plants and animals. 4. Detritus food chain - Transforms litter into nutrients. 5. Energy-flow diagram -The movement of energy from one trophic level to the next. 6. Energy pyramid - The flow of energy from the producer through the various consumers. 7. Food webs - Diagrams illustrating the complex interaction of organisms in an ecosystem. 8. Heterotrophs - Organisms that consume autotrophs or other heterotrophs for food and

use their energy.

9. Producers - Organisms that carry on photosynthesis and, thus, create their own food. 10. Pyramid - A diagram illustrating the flow of a commodity through the ecosystem.

a) Pyramid of biomass - A pyramid based on chemical energy. b) Pyramid of numbers - A pyramid based on the number of organisms involved at various levels.

11. Trophic level - Each level in an energy pyramid.

Food Chains & Food Webs

Do you like to play games? If you do, you will need energy. Every time you run or jump, you are using up energy in your body. How do you get the energy to play? You get energy from the food you eat. Similarly, all living things get energy from their food so that they can move and grow. As food passes through the body, some of it is digested. This process of digestion releases energy. A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals. For example, a simple food chain links the trees & shrubs, the giraffes (that eat trees & shrubs), and the lions (that eat the giraffes). Each link in this chain is food for the next link. A food chain always starts with plant life and ends with an animal.

1. Plants are called producers because they are able to use light energy from the Sun to produce food (sugar)
from carbon dioxide and water.

2. Animals cannot make their own food so they must eat plants and/or other animals. They are
called consumers. There are three groups of consumers.

a. Animals that eat ONLY PLANTS are called herbivores (or primary consumers). b. Animals that eat OTHER ANIMALS are called carnivores.
carnivores that eat herbivores are called secondary consumers carnivores that eat other carnivores are called tertiary consumers e.g., killer whales in an ocean food web ... phytoplankton small fishes seals killer whales

3. Animals and people who eat BOTH animals and plants are called omnivores. 4. Then there are decomposers (bacteria and fungi) which feed on decaying matter.
These decomposers speed up the decaying process that releases mineral salts back into the food chain for absorption by plants as nutrients. Image Map of the Nitrogen Cycle - What happens in the soil? Do you know why there are more herbivores than carnivores? In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another. When a herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy (that it gets from the plant food) becomes new body mass; the rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up by the herbivore to carry out its life processes (e.g., movement, digestion, reproduction). Therefore, when the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small amount of total energy (that it has received) to the carnivore. Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be "wasted" or "used up" by the carnivore. The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get enough energy to grow. Because of the large amount of energy that is lost at each link, the amount of energy that is transferred gets lesser and lesser ... 1. The further along the food chain you go, the less food (and hence energy) remains available.

The above energy pyramid shows many trees & shrubs providing food and energy to giraffes. Note that as we go up, there are fewer giraffes than trees & shrubs and even fewer lions than giraffes ... as we go further along a food chain, there are fewer and fewer consumers. In other words, a large mass of living things at the base is required to support a few at the top ... many herbivores are needed to support a few carnivores

2. Most food chains have no more than four or five links.

There cannot be too many links in a single food chain because the animals at the end of the chain would not get enough food (and hence energy) to stay alive. Most animals are part of more than one food chain and eat more than one kind of food in order to meet their food and energy requirements. These interconnected food chains form a food web. The following is a possible food web: Note that the arrows are drawn from food source to food consumers ... in other words, you can substitute the arrows with the words "eaten by" If you are using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Netscape Navigator (v4) browsers, you may want to have some fun ... creating a possible food web

Food chains in different habitats: Desert | Coniferous Forest | Deciduous Forest | Temperate Rainforest A change in the size of one population in a food chain will affect other populations. This interdependence of the populations within a food chain helps to maintain the balance of plant and animal populations within a community. For example, when there are too many giraffes; there will be insufficient trees and shrubs for all of them to eat. Many giraffes will starve and die. Fewer giraffes means more time for the trees and shrubs to grow to maturity and multiply. Fewer giraffes also means less food is available for the lions to eat and some lions will starve to death. When there are fewer lions, the giraffe population will increase.

Next Page: Accommodation and Adaptation (top)

Ecological pyramid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An ecological pyramid.

An ecological pyramid (also trophic pyramid or energy pyramid) is a graphical representation designed to show the biomass or biomass productivity at eachtrophic level in a given ecosystem. Biomass is the amount of living or organic matter present in an organism. Biomass pyramids show how much biomass is present in the organisms at each trophic level, while productivity pyramids show the production or turnover in biomass. Ecological pyramids begin with producers on the bottom (such as plants) and proceed through the various trophic levels (such as herbivores that eat plants, then carnivores that eat herbivores, then carnivores that eat those carnivores, and so on). The highest level is the top of the food chain.

[edit]Pyramid

of biomass

An ecological pyramid of biomass shows the relationship between biomass and trophic level by quantifying the amount of biomass present at each trophic level of an ecological community at a particular moment in time. Typical units for a biomass pyramid could be grams per meter2, or calories per meter2. The pyramid of biomass may be 'inverted'. For example, in a pond ecosystem, the standing crop of phytoplankton, the major producers, at any given point will be lower than the mass of the heterotrophs, such as fish and insects. This is explained as the phytoplankton reproducevery quickly, but have much shorter individual lives. One problem with biomass pyramids is that they can make a trophic level look like it contains more energy than it actually does. For example, all birds have beaks and skeletons, which despite taking up mass are not eaten by the next trophic level. In a pyramid of biomassthe skeletons and beaks would still be quantified even though they do not contribute to the overall flow of energy when ripping and tearing into the next trophic level.

[edit]Pyramid

of productivity

An ecological pyramid of productivity is often more useful, showing the production or turnover of biomass at each trophic level. Instead of showing a single snapshot in time, productivity pyramids show the flow of energy through the food chain. Typical units would be grams per meter2 per year or calories per meter2 per year. As with the others, this graph begins with producers at the bottom and places higher trophic levels on top. When an ecosystem is healthy, this graph produces a standard ecological pyramid. This is because in order for the ecosystem to sustain itself, there must be more energy at lower trophic levels than there is at higher trophic levels. This allows for organisms on the lower levels to not only maintain a stable population, but to also transfer energy up the pyramid. The exception to this

generalization is when portions of afood web are supported by inputs of resources from outside of the local community. In small, forested streams, for example gone up greater than could be supported by the local primary production. When energy is transferred to the next trophic level, typically only 10%[citation needed] of it is used to build new biomass, becoming stored energy (the rest going to metabolic processes). As such, in a pyramid of productivity each step will be 10% the size of the previous step (100, 10, 1, 0.1, 0.01)[citation needed]. The advantages of the pyramid of productivity: It takes account of the rate of production over a period of time. Two species of comparable biomass may have very different life spans. Therefore their relative biomasses is misleading, but their productivity is directly comparable.

The relative energy chain within an ecosystem can be compared using pyramids of energy; also different ecosystems can be compared.

There are no inverted pyramids. The input of solar energy can be added.

The disadvantages of the pyramid of productivity: The rate of biomass production of an organism is required, which involves measuring growth and reproduction through time. There is still the difficulty of assigning the organisms to a specific trophic level. As well as the organism in the food chains there is the problem of assigning the decomposers and detritivores to a particular trophic level. Nonetheless, productivity pyramids usually provide more insight into an ecological community when the necessary information is available.

[edit]Pyramid

of numbers

An ecological pyramid of numbers shows graphically the population of each level in a food chain. The diagram to the right shows a (nonfictional) example of a five level pyramid of numbers: 10,000 fresh water shrimps support 1,000 bleak, which in turn support 100 perches followed by 10northern pikes and finally one osprey.

Food chain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Food chain in a Swedish lake. Osprey feed on northern pike, which in turn feed onperch which eat bleak that feed on freshwater shrimp

A food chain is a linear sequence of links in a food web starting from a trophic species that eats no other species in the web and ends at a trophic species that is eaten by no other species in the web. A food chain differs from a food web, because the complex polyphagous network of feeding relations are aggregated into trophic species and the chain only follows linear monophagous pathways. A common metric used to quantify food web trophic structure is food chain length. In its simplest form, the length of a chain is the number of links between a trophic consumer and the base of the web and the mean chain length of an entire web is the arithmetic average of the lengths of all chains in a food web.[1][2][3] Food chains were first introduced in a book published 1927 by Charles Elton, which also introduced the food web concept.[4][5][6]

[edit]Food

chain length

Food chains are directional paths of trophic energy or, equivalently, sequences of links that start with basal species, such as producers or fine organic matter, and end with consumer organisms. [7]:370

The food chain length is a continuous variable that provides a measure of the passage of energy and an index of ecological structure that increases in value counting progressively through the linkages in a linear fashion from the lowest to the highest trophic (feeding) levels.[8][9] Food chains are often used in ecological modeling (such as a three species food chain). They are simplified abstractions of real food webs, but complex in their dynamics and mathematical implications.[2] Ecologists have formulated and tested hypotheses regarding the nature of ecological patterns associated with food chain length, such as increasing length increasing with ecosystem size, reduction of energy at each successive level, or the proposition that long food chain lengths are unstable.[9] Food chain studies have had an important role in ecotoxicology studies tracing the pathways and biomagnification of environmental contaminants. [10] Food chain vary in length from three to six or more levels. A food chain consisting of a flower, a frog, a snake and an owl consists of four levels; whereas a food chain consisting of grass, a grasshopper, a rat, a snake and finally a hawk consists of five levels. Producers are organisms that utilize solar energy or heat energy to synthesise starch.Eg.plants. All food chains must start with a producer. Consumers are organisms that eat other organisms. All organisms in a food chain, except the first organism, are consumers.

Marine Fisheries Food Webs

Food Webs
All our ideas of life in the sea are rapidly changing. The plants and animals described on this page are mostly large. Yet, the marine food web is dominated by astronomical numbers of micro, nano, and pico plankton described in the chapter on the Microbial Food Webs. We know little about these organisms. They are too small to be easily seen and studied. They cannot be cultured. They tend to all look alike. We can separate marine microbes using DNA analysis, and the analysis is leading to remarkable discoveries. Life in the sea is much more diverse than we expected. For example, we now know, since the 1970s that all life is separated into three domains. All three are very common in the ocean. Click on any of the three domains and explore the microscopic world. Since the discovery of the astronomical number of microbes in the ocean, we now recognize two important, overlapping food webs in the ocean.

1. The microbial food web discussed in that chapter. This web dominates the carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrient cycles of the earth
system. 2. The marine fisheries food web discussed here.

The two webs are coupled in many ways that are not yet understood. Microbes cycle nutrients, they produce other nutrients such as vitamins needed by primary producers discussed here, and they infect, sicken, and kill many organisms in the marine fisheries food web. We are not the only large animals that get viral and bacterial diseases.

Phytoplankton: Primary Producers of the Marine Fisheries Web

The sunlit upper layers of the ocean, called the euphotic zone, are home to vast numbers of single-cell marine primary producers called phytoplankton. They include diatoms, coccolithophores, cyanobacteria especially synechococcus and prochlorococcus, and dinoflagellates. Of these major classes of organisms, all but the cyanobacteria are eukaryotes, organisms with cells with a nucleus. Microscopic, eukaryota phytoplankton were formerly lumped together under the term protists, but this is a catch-all term. Recent studies of protist DNA and ultrastructure has shown that the protists are far more diverse than had been previously expected; they probably should be classified in several kingdom-level taxa. We retain the word "protist" as a convenient term to mean "eukaryote that isn't a plant, animal, or fungus. From Eukaryota: Systematics. The term algae is another catch-all term for primary producers with chlorophyll that formerly included many unrelated organisms, excluding land plants. Phytoplankton are primary producers because they use solar energy to convert CO2 and nutrients into carbohydrates and other molecules used by life. Together, they account for about 95% of the primary productivity in the ocean and about half of all primary productivity on earth. Phytoplankton are most common in cooler, mid-latitude zones with sufficient nutrients, especially nitrogen. Thus they are common in the north Atlantic and Pacific, and along coasts. They are much less common in the central regions of the ocean and in the southern hemisphere. For more information, see the chapter on phytoplankton distribution. The major primary producers include:

1. Diatoms. They dominate the temperate and polar oceans. Typical size is about 30 micrometers. They contribute about 60 per cent
of the primary productivity in the oceans.

2. Coccolithophores. They dominate in regions of moderate turbulence and nutrients such as mid-latitudes in late spring in subpolar
regions and in equatorial regions. Typical size is 5-10 micrometers in diameter. They are one of the worlds major primary producers, contributing about 15 per cent of the average oceanic phytoplankton biomass to the oceans (Berger, 1976).

3. Cyanobacteria. Typical size is about 1 micrometer in diameter. The most common are prochlorococcus and synechoccis. 4. Dinoflagellates.They tend to dominate in regions of low turbulence and nutrients, such as oceanic areas in late summer. Sizes
range from 30 micrometers for some marine species up to 2,000 micrometers (2 mm) for Noctiluca. Example: Diatoms are single-celled organisms with a nucleus (unicellular, eukaryotic organisms) capable of converting sunlight into carbohydrates. The diatoms are located near the bottom of the Tree of Life. They belong to the Stramenopiles which are included in thechromalveolates supergroup of the eukaryotes. The relationships among the phytoplankton and organisms near the base of the tree of life is not yet well understood (see the Discussion of Phylogenetic Relationships) and the primary interrelationships are just now becoming clear. There are perhaps 200,000 different species of diatoms ranging is size from micrometers to millimeters. Some are no more closely related than fish and mammals (Armbrust 2009). They account for 20% of the photosynthesis on earth. The skeleton of a diatom, or frustule, is made of very pure silica coated with a layer of carbon-based material. This skeleton is divided into two parts, one of which (the epitheca) overlaps the other (the hypotheca) like the lid of a box or petri dish. Observe the diatom frustule below, in which the two halves have been pushed slightly askew. From University of California, Berkeley, Museum of Paleontology, phylogeny wing's page on Diatoms.

Zooplankton
The phytoplankton are eaten by the smallest floating animals, the zooplankton. They range in size from single-celled organisms to larger multi-celled organisms. Small zooplankton are eaten by larger zooplankton. Zooplankton include

1. Single-celled animals such as ciliates or amoeboids that never grow large. 2. Copepods. 3. Shrimp. 4. Larval forms of barnacles, molluscs, fishes, and jellyfish, all of which grow to be much larger animals.
Example: Copepods The copepods are a class of crustaceans with over 7,500 species, most of which are marine. Copepods are small (only a few species over 1 mm) and extremely abundant, often dominating the plankton community. They form a link in the food web between the primary-producing phytoplankton and the plankton-feeding fish like Atlantic herring. Almost all fish found in temperate and polar waters rely at some point in their life cycle on copepods and other shrimp-like zooplankton (krill) as a food source. From Atlantic herring. Paraeuchaeta norvegica, a carnivorous copepod commonly found in fjords and North Atlantic waters. Click on image for a zoom. This beautiful photo was taken by Hege Vestheim of the University of Oslo. From University of Oslo, Department of Biology, Images.

Small Predators
Zooplankton are eaten by small predators:

1. Shrimp and krill.

2.

Immature stages of larger animals such as jellyfish and fish.

3. Small fish such as sardines, menhaden, and herring.

Example: Clupeus harengus (Atlantic herring) is a small bait fish. It schools in coastal waters. It feeds on small planktonic copepods in the first year, thereafter mainly on copepods. Adults are about 30-35 cm in length, and they live about 20 years. They are eaten by many species of birds, fish, and marine mammals. From Food and Agriculture Organization via Fishbase.

Top Predators
At the top of the marine food web are the large predators:

1. Jellyfish and cephalopods (squid and octopus).

2. Large fish such as sharks, tuna, and mackerel. directly).

3. Marine mammals including seals, walruses, dolphins, and some species of whales (some eat fish, others eat zooplankton 4. Birds such as pelikans, albatross, penguins, and skua.
5. People, the dominant top predator. Example: Thunnus alalunga (Albacore) is large, fast-swimming fish. Their average weight is about 9-20 kg. They are thought to become sexually mature when they are 5-6 years old and about a meter long. They have a maximum lifespan of 8 years. They are well adapted to swim fast, and they prey on many species of fish. From Food and Agriculture Organization via Fishbase.

Food Chains and Food Webs

Phytoplankton, small zooplankton, larger zooplankton such as jellyfish, larger animals including bait fish and squid, (see also here), and top predators such as tuna, all interact in a marine food web. Each species eats and is eaten by several other species at different trophic levels. Big fish eat little fish; thats how the food cycle works. Of course, theres more to it than that. A whirlwind spiral up the marine food chain goes like this: Phytoplanktonmicroscopic plants drifting in the waterfeed the copepods and other grazers that feed the small menhaden and crustaceans that feed the stripers and bluefish that feed the tunas and swordfish that feed us. From The Marine Food Web by Tony Corey and David Beutel The interactions in a food web are far more complex than the interactions in a food chain. Furthermore, the branching structure of food webs leads to fewer top predators compared with the numbers of top predators in a food chain.

An example of a simplified food web, which defines the various elements of such webs (functional groups), the flow between them, and so-called trophic levels, which indicate the position of each functional group within the web. From "Fishing down marine food webs' as an integrative concept" by Daniel Pauly (University of British Columbia, Canada), Proceedings of

the EXPO'98 Conference on Ocean Food Webs and Economic Productivity, online at the Community Research and Development Information Page. Using the illustration above, a food chain would go from phytoplankton to large zooplankton such as krill to marine mammals such as baleen whales with no branches. Food chains are much rarer than food webs in marine ecosystems, although the example I just gave which leads to baleen whales is a common food chain in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.