Trophic Structures

Question 1

What is trophic (hierarchical) structure?

Answer 1

Trophic structure is putting organisms into levels, based on their feeding relationships and amount of energy they consume.

Question 1

What are feeding relationships?

Answer 1

The process of where they transfer energy by being eaten or eating. They are not isolated units like foodchains.

Question 2

What’s a food web?

Answer 2

A diagram that shows the feeding relationships and energy transfer between species in an ecosystem

Question 3

Trophic means getting or eating food.

Question 4

When you go from one trophic level to another what happens?

Answer 4

Loss of energy.

Question 5

Whats the efficiency when transferring energy, and how much do you lose?

Answer 5

5-20%, lose 80-95%

Question 6

What’s the rule of 10?

Answer 6

10% energy is successfully passed to the next level, 10% of chemical energy stored in organic mater of each level is converted into organic matter at the next level

ex: 100kg of producers can support 10kg of primary consumers