Three

hundred trout are needed to support

one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must
consume 90,000 frogs, that must consume
27 million grasshoppers that live off of
1,000 tons of grass.
-- G. Tyler Miller, Jr., American Chemist (1971)

Question: Do you think it would take 1000 tonnes

of grass to feed the man?

Energy Flow In Ecosystems

Food chains generally

have only a few trophic
levels (between 3 and 6)
because the laws of
thermodynamics limit
the amount of energy
that can be transferred
from on trophic level to
the next.
Each time energy is
transferred, some is lost
as unusable heat which
is unavailable to the next
trophic level.

 The

efficiency of biological energy

transfer varies, but ranges between 5%
and 20%. This means that between 80
95% of energy at one trophic level is n ot
available to organisms at the next
trophic level.

 Rule

of 10: For convenience we take an

average energy efficiency of 10%. This
means that ecologists assume that only
10% of the energy at one trophic level is
transferred to the next.
Where does the other 90% go? It goes
mostly to heat which is lost to the
atmosphere as the animal walks, grows,
breaths, production of waste products.

Why the arrows keep shrinking

between different feeding (trophic) levels

1. The mouse receives energy from the food it eats.

2. The mouse's cells extract the food's energy so it can be used for the mouse's survival needs (e.g., growth, acquiring
food, escaping enemies). The process is not 100% efficient and a lot of energy is lost as heat. The mouse can use this
heat to help keep its body temperature at a normal level during cold weather.
3. Some of the energy that is in the food is lost in the mouse's waste (feces).
4. The remaining energy is stored in the mouse's body and is available to the organism that preys on it. About 90% of the
energy acquired in the mouse's food is used or lost by the mouse and only 10% is available to predators.

 Ecologists

represent the relative amounts of energy in

an ecosystem in an ecological pyramid. Ecological

pyramids show a relationship between energy

available at each trophic level.
The

pyramid is divided into sections, each

representing one trophic level. An ecological pyramid
can show energy, biomass or the number of
organisms in a food web.

A pyramid of numbers
shows the number of
organisms at each
trophic (relating to
nutrition) level. In
pyramids of numbers,
each successive trophic
level is occupied by
fewer organisms. Thus
the number of
herbivores is greater
than the carnivores.

Pyramid of numbers

Sometimes a pyramid of
numbers can be
inverted, such as in a
woodland ecosystem,
where there are
relatively small numbers
of producers (like large
trees) and many more
primary consumers
(insects eating the trees
leaves)

A pyramid of biomass
illustrates the total
biomass at each
successive trophic level.
Biomass is the total
amount of living matter
at a trophic level. The
pyramids of biomass
show a progressive
reduction of biomass in
the successive trophic
level.

Pyramid of Energy

A pyramid of energy
indicates the energy
content in the
biomass of a trophic
level. These pyramids
show that less energy
reaches each
successive trophic
from the level
beneath it because
some of the energy at
the lower level is used
by the organisms to
perform work, while
some of it is lost.