Learning About Food Webs and Energy Pyramids Summary

          In the world, there's many relationships and patterns that all species and beings go through. The circle of life involves many organisms chaining together to be able to receive what they need to survive. Each animal/plant is in a specific trophic level, the first one being a producer, then primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer, and finally the decomposes/scavengers. All these organisms form food chains, and eventually a food web which shows how member of different food chains interact with each other, forming a complicated set of relationships. At the producer level, they get energy from the sun and it goes up after that. Decomposers obtain energy from the left over energy from the tertiary consumers' waste. Also, there are 100 original units that come from the sun (photosynthesis) that the producer soaked up. Each level up, only about 10% is kept. The rest of it dispersed into heat. This means, that the organisms at the top of the pyramid get less energy as it passes on.

 



          This is an example of a food web, and it shows all the interconnections of all these sea animals. As you can see, there are 5 trophic levels in each food chain. For example, the green algae is a producer, the oysters are primary consumers, the emperor angel fish is a secondary consumer, the killer whale is a tertiary consumer, and finally the sea urchins are scavengers. Each organisms receives an even smaller fraction of energy, as it goes up.

          This food web is a part of the ocean biome, so it includes animals like whales, krill, octopus, turtles, and much more. In the ocean, there's a not a lot of producers that can get too much of the sun rays so its more difficult to pass on energy. In conclusion, people should eat vegetables and everything that comes from plants to get enough energy the first time, rather than having to consume more of higher levels. Its healthier, and also doesn't kill as many animals.