Producers
• Use energy from the sun and convert it to Chemical energy through photosynthesis.
• Also known as Autotrophs or “self-feeders”
• Includes plants, some bacteria and photosynthetic protists such as phytoplankton.
• CO2+H20 C6H12O2 + O2
Consumers
• Organisms that must get their energy by eating other organisms.
• All animals are consumers.
• Also know as Heterothrophs, because they must get their nutrients from an outside source.
• Different degrees of Consumers
Secondary Consumers
• Animals that eat Primary Consumers
• Carnivores that eat herbivores are 2o consumers
• Examples :
cougar eat deer
Bird eating a grasshopper
Tertiary Consumer
• A carnivore that eats and animal that eats animals that eats plants are 3o consumers
Examples:
-Hawk eats the bird that ate the grasshopper
-A fish that ate a fish that ate algae
3o consumers are susceptible to toxins building up in the food chain.
Quaternary Consumer
• Animals that eat animals that eat animal that eats animals that eats plants are 4o consumers.
A killer whale that eats a seal that ate a fish that ate krill that ate plankton is an a 4o consumer.
Energy is lost
• At each trophic level energy is lost as heat and waste, so only between 1-10% of the energy consumed is available to the next level.
• So plants only get to use about 10% of the 10,000 units of energy or about 1000 units.
• The herbivores only get about 10% of that as plants use a lot of energy in their growth and maintenance. So they get about 100 units
• So by the time a quaternary consumer comes along, there is only 0.1 units of energy left. Not much!
.01 units
1 unit
10 units
100 units
1000 units
• That’s why there are fewer carnivores than herbivores in an ecosystem. As energy passes through the trophic levels, energy is lost as heat and waste at each level.
• So there may be 200 or more deer in the range of one mountain lion.
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