Section 1: Energy Flow in Ecosystems Flashcards
What is a producer?
An organism that can make its own food through photosynthesis.
What are the three energy roles?
Producers, consumers, and decomposers
What is a consumer?
An organism that gets energy by eating other organisms.
What are the three names for organisms that eat meat, plants, and both?
Herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores
What are herbivores?
Organisms that only eat plants.
What are carnivores?
Organisms that only eat meat.
What are omnivores?
Organisms that eat both meat and plants.
What are decomposers?
Organisms that break down wastes and dead organisms and return the raw materials to the ecosystem.
What are scavengers?
Organisms that eat dead animals.
What is a food chain?
A series of events in which one organism eats another and obtains energy.
What is a food web?
Many food chains connected together in an ecosystem.
What is the first organism in a food chain?
The producers
What are the second organisms in a food chain?
First-level consumers
What are the third organisms in a food chain?
Second-level consumers
What is an energy pyramid?
A diagram that shows that amount of energy that moves from one feeding level to another in a food web.
What unit is energy measured in?
Kilocalories or kcal
Where is the most energy available in an energy pyramid?
The producer level.
Where is the least amount of energy found in an energy pyramid?
The top.
What percent of energy in an energy pyramid moves to the next level?
10%
Where does the other 90% of the energy shown in energy pyramids go?
To the help consumers carry out their life process or is lost to the environment as heat.
Why is a food web a more realistic way of portraying an ecosystem than is a food chain?
Because not all organisms eat the same thing everyday. Just like humans, most organisms eat more than one species.
Why are there usually few organisms at the top of an energy pyramid?
Because there is less energy available at the top of the pyramid.
