ENERGY IN AN ECOSYSTEM

Organisms get the energy they need to survive by the food chain. Plants get the energy they need to survive from the sun. Energy enters by sunlight and moves through the ecosystem by the trophic levels. 

 

A food web is a model that shows the complex network of feeding relasionships and the flow of energy.

 

 

 

  PYRAMID MODEL:

Trophic levels are the leves of nourishment in a food chain. Energy moves from level to level because energy flows up the chain from the lowest trophic level to the highest. The lost of energy between trophic levels may be as much as 90%  which means that only 10% of the available energy is left to transfer from one tophic level to another. In other words this can be known as the the rule of 10.

 

 

A trophic pyramid is a diagram that compares energy used by producers, primary consumers and other trophic levels.

 

 

A Biomass pyramid is a diagram that compares the biomass of different trophic levels within an ecosystem.

 

 

A pyramid of numbers shows the  numbers of individual organism at each trophic level in an ecosystem.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited: 

Littell, McDougal. Biology. Evanston,IL: Stephen Nowicki, 2008