Energy Flow in Ecosystems

An organism that makes its own food.

The process used by producers to make food.

Organisms are grouped by how they obtain their nutrition.

An organism that eats other organisms for nutrition

An organism that breaks down dead matter.

An animal that gets its energy by eating plants.

An animal that gets its energy by eating other animals.

Herbivores eat plants.

Carnivores eat other animals.

Consumers eat other organisms.

A cow is an example of an herbivore.

A lion is an example of a carnivore.

The position of an organism in a food chain or food web, representing its feeding level.

Producers form the base of the energy pyramid, providing the initial source of energy for the ecosystem.

Producers obtain energy through photosynthesis, converting sunlight into chemical energy.

Primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers are stacked above producers, representing different levels of energy consumption.

Energy passes from organism to organism through feeding, with each level receiving a portion of the previous level's energy.

Energy is lost between trophic levels through cellular respiration, carbon dioxide release, heat production, and waste.

Energy is lost from the ecosystem through processes like cellular respiration, waste production, and heat dissipation.

Trees, as producers, capture energy from sunlight, making them more abundant in comparison to foxes, which are higher-level consumers with less available energy.

Only a portion of the energy from consumed food is available to the next trophic level.

Food chains typically have fewer than five trophic levels due to decreasing energy availability at higher levels.

Each trophic level in a food chain receives less energy than the previous one.

Humans affect food webs by overharvesting and introducing foreign species.

Excessive removal of a food species can disrupt the food chain, potentially causing population declines.

New species introduced to an ecosystem can disrupt the balance by outcompeting native species or preying on them.

Overharvesting and introduced species can have cascading effects on different trophic levels in a food web.

Maintaining healthy food chains and webs is crucial for a stable ecosystem.

The continuous movement of carbon between the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, land, and living organisms.

Through photosynthesis, plants take in carbon dioxide from the air and use it to create sugars for energy.

Animals and plants breathe out carbon dioxide as a waste product during respiration.

When organisms die, their carbon is stored in their remains.

Decomposers (like bacteria and fungi) break down dead organisms, releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

Over millions of years, some dead organisms get buried and become fossil fuels, trapping carbon underground.

When we burn fossil fuels, the stored carbon is released as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Human activities, like burning fossil fuels, are significantly increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to climate change.

Introducing a new species to an ecosystem can disrupt the food chain by creating competition for resources, leading to a decrease in resources for existing organisms and potentially their death.

It's more energy-efficient to consume crops directly rather than consuming livestock that have been fed on crops because energy is lost at each trophic level.

Primary consumers, like herbivores, obtain energy from producers (plants) but lose about 90% of that energy through metabolism and other processes making them less efficient food sources.

When new species are introduced, they compete with existing organisms for resources like food and space, impacting the balance of the ecosystem.

Only 10% of the energy consumed by primary consumers is available to secondary consumers, which are organisms that eat primary consumers.

Changes in the ecosystem, such as the introduction of new species or changes in resource availability, can have drastic consequences for the food chain.

All organisms in an ecosystem are interconnected and depend on each other for survival. Disruptions in the food chain can have cascading effects on the entire ecosystem.