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Decomposers

Consumers

Figure 3, p. 26

Break down wastes and dead organisms and return the raw materials to the ecosystem.

  • Like nature's recyclers.
  • Obtain energy for their own needs while returning simple molecules to the environment.
  • Used by other organisms (i.e. mushrooms, bacteria)

An organism that obtains energy by feeding on other organisms.

  • Classified by what they eat.
  • Herbivores - eat only plants
  • Carnivores - eat only animals
  • Omnivores - eat both plants and animals.

  • Some are scavengers - feed on the bodies of dead organisms (i.e. catfish and vultures)

Food Chains and Food Webs

The movement of energy through an ecosystem can be shown in diagrams called food chains and webs.

  • Only about 10% of the energy at one level of a food web is transferred to the next higher level. 90% is used for the organism's life process.
  • This limits the amount of higher level consumers an ecosystem can support.
  • There are usually few organisms at the highest level in a food web.

An organism may play more than one role in an ecosystem.

  • grass-mouse (first level consumer)
  • grass-grasshopper-mouse (second level consumer)

Food Webs

Consists of many overlapping food chains in an ecosystem.

  • Most producers and consumers are part of many food chains - you don't eat the same thing every day.
  • You can trace the many food chains in a woodland ecosystem...

Energy Pyramids

  • Just as food chains overlap and connect, so do food webs.
  • A gull can eat a fish from the ocean or a mouse at a landfill.
  • The gull is part of two food webs - ocean food web and land food web.
  • All food webs interconnect = global food web

Energy Roles

Food Chain

Each of the organisms in an ecosystem fills the energy role of producer, consumer, or decomposer.

A series of events in which one organism eats another and obtains energy.

  • First organism in a food chain is always a producer (ex. tree)
  • Second organism feeds on the producer = first level consumer (ex. carpenter ant)
  • Second-level consumer eats the first -level consumer (ex. woodpecker)

The amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another in a food web.

  • The most energy is available at the producer level of the pyramid. As you move up the pyramid, each level has less energy available than the level below.

Producers

  • An organism that can make its own food is a producer.
  • Source of all the food in an ecosystem.
  • Most energy enters ecosystems through sunlight
  • Plants, algae, and some bacteria capture the energy of sunlight and store it as food energy.
  • Some obtain energy from within their environment.
  • Certain bacteria in an ecosystem beneath the ground produce their own food using the energy in a gas, hydrogen sulfide, that is found in their environment.

Energy Flow in Ecosystems

Section 2-1

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