Learning About Food Webs and Energy Pyramids Summary

Jackson Cline

Mr.Butera

AP Environmental P.6

Oct. 4 2014

Food Webs and Energy Pyramids

From the Food Webs and Energy Pyramids experiment I learned many things about food chains and food webs. A food chain is chain of animals/plants in a order from the system in which energy is moved along from animal to animal by eating each other. Examples of this in nature would be grass being eaten by a deer, where then that deer would be eaten by a wolf, and when that wolf dies decomposers will decompose that wolf .Food webs however are are a net of  animals and what-eats-what in a ecological community in a large net (example in picture below). A food web in other words is a large net of different food chains connecting what eats what.

My group was given a forest biome to view and explore. The biome that we were given surprisingly had a well rounded biodiversity, varying from rodents to birds to some interesting larger carnivores. In the food bet that we put together there was a lot of connections going from animal to animal and in the end all being connected to the decomposers. The most interesting part of it was the connection of the animals and how one animal in a biome could affect sonny others. In the end we are all intertwined in a large net of animals and what we do effects others and ourselves.

                                             (food chains and food net example below)

I also learned about the different trophic levels and how they all transfer energy to one another. In definition a trophic level is the types of food that organisms eats and how those organisms depend on each other. These different levels are the producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiaries, and decomposers. Producers are organisms that get energy from solar rays and example of this would be grass. A primary consumer is a organism that receives its energy from eating producers and will only get 10% of the producers energy, an example of a primary consumer would be a deer. Secondary consumer on the other hand get there energy from eating a primary consumer a fox would be a good example of a secondary consumer. A tertiary organism on the upper hand gets its energy from devouring both primary and secondary consumers, eagles are an amazing example of a tertiary. Lastly decomposers are small organisms that decompose dead animals and plants, it is debated however on where they belong on the energy pyramid examples of this are found in funguses and others alike.

Citations:

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