Learning About Food Webs and Energy Pyramids Summary

From the "Learning About Food Webs and Energy Pyramids" activity, I learned about food chains and webs and the transfer of energy between organisms. The energy flow starts out in producers, who use photosynthesis to create food (glucose) for themselves, then use aerobic respiration to convert that food into energy. The producers are then eaten by consumers. Primary consumers eat producers, secondary consumers eat primary consumers, and tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers. Additionally there are decomposers and detritivores which break down dead organisms and get energy from them. Energy is transferred through this chain, but each trophic level only gets ten percent of what it eats. So, plants have the most energy, and tertiary consumers receive the least. A food chain is a sequence of what consumes what consumes what, and a food web is several interconnected food chains. During the activity I learned about a food web in a biome, mine being a desert environment.

This is an example of a food web in a desert environment. There are the five different trophic levels and their interconnected energy transfers. Not all of the organisms share energy transfers since not all animals eat every single organism in the trophic level beneath it. Examples include prickly pear cacti as producers, rattlesnakes as secondary consumers, and termites as decomposers.

Works Cited:

Frey Scientific. Environmental Issues and Solutions Module Curriculum Guide. Nashua, New Hampshire: Frey Scientific, 2013. Print