Ecology and the environment - Feeding relationships

Question 2

What are the different trophic levels

Answer 2

1) Producers
2) Primary consumers
3) Secondary consumers
4) Tertiary consumers
5) Apex predators
(6) Decomposers)

Question 3

Understand how food webs, food chains, pyramids of number, pyramids of biomass and pyramids of energy transfer

Question 4

How is energy transferred through the food chain and how much is transferred

Answer 4

When a predator eats the victim it gains a small percentage of it’s biomass

About ten per cent of the biomass is transferred. So an animal has to eat more than one of the animal from the trophic level below

Question 5

Why is only 10% of an animals biomass transferred when it is eaten

Answer 5

90% is lost through life processes. This includes excretion of undigested material as faces, respiration giving out carbon dioxide and loss of urea in urine