Section 1: Energy Flow in Ecosystems

Question 0

What is a producer?

Answer 0

An organism that can make its own food through photosynthesis.

Question 1

What are the three energy roles?

Answer 1

Producers, consumers, and decomposers

Question 2

What is a consumer?

Answer 2

An organism that gets energy by eating other organisms.

Question 3

What are the three names for organisms that eat meat, plants, and both?

Answer 3

Herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores

Question 4

What are herbivores?

Answer 4

Organisms that only eat plants.

Question 5

What are carnivores?

Answer 5

Organisms that only eat meat.

Question 6

What are omnivores?

Answer 6

Organisms that eat both meat and plants.

Question 7

What are decomposers?

Answer 7

Organisms that break down wastes and dead organisms and return the raw materials to the ecosystem.

Question 8

What are scavengers?

Answer 8

Organisms that eat dead animals.

Question 10

What is a food chain?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

What is a food web?

Answer 11

Many food chains connected together in an ecosystem.

Question 12

What is the first organism in a food chain?

Answer 12

The producers

Question 13

What are the second organisms in a food chain?

Answer 13

First-level consumers

Question 14

What are the third organisms in a food chain?

Answer 14

Second-level consumers

Question 15

What is an energy pyramid?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What unit is energy measured in?

Answer 16

Kilocalories or kcal

Question 17

Where is the most energy available in an energy pyramid?

Answer 17

The producer level.

Question 18

Where is the least amount of energy found in an energy pyramid?

Answer 18

The top.

Question 19

What percent of energy in an energy pyramid moves to the next level?

Answer 19

10%

Question 20

Where does the other 90% of the energy shown in energy pyramids go?

Answer 20

To the help consumers carry out their life process or is lost to the environment as heat.

Question 21

Why is a food web a more realistic way of portraying an ecosystem than is a food chain?

Answer 21

Because not all organisms eat the same thing everyday. Just like humans, most organisms eat more than one species.

Question 22

Why are there usually few organisms at the top of an energy pyramid?

Answer 22

Because there is less energy available at the top of the pyramid.