What Do We Call the First Organism in Any Food Chain to Get Energy Directly From a Producer?
Life on the Food Chain
Have y'all ever wondered why we can't seem to feed the world'southward hungry? It'southward a complex issue, but it might surprise you to larn that information technology'southward not because there isn't enough food; electric current agricultural chapters, based on electric current engineering, exists to feed as many every bit ten billion people. The Earth's population is "only" about 7 billion. The big question actually is: If nosotros desire to feed anybody, what would everyone need to eat? To answer that question, download this excel spreadsheet and effort plugging in some numbers.
Case: One acre of a grain crop could be used to feed cattle, and then the cattle could be used to feed people. If 50% of the energy is lost to the cattle, you could feed twice as many people if you fed them the grain directly. Another mode of looking at it is that information technology would but take a one-half acre of land to feed the people grain, but a whole acre if you feed the grain to the cattle and the cattle to the people. A common exercise to grow cattle faster is to feed them ground upward animal protein. This means that when we eat the meat from the cow, we're at the third level or higher. The loss of energy between trophic levels may also be fifty-fifty higher. Contempo studies propose that only ~10% of energy is converted to biomass from i trophic level to the next!
The Food Chain: The answer has to practise with trophic levels. As you lot probably know, the organisms at the base of the food chain are photosynthetic; plants on land and phytoplankton (algae) in the oceans. These organisms are called the producers, and they go their energy directly from sunlight and inorganic nutrients. The organisms that consume the producers are the main consumers. They tend to be minor in size and there are many of them. The primary consumers are herbivores (vegetarians). The organisms that consume the primary consumers are meat eaters (carnivores) and are chosen the secondary consumers. The secondary consumers tend to be larger and fewer in number. This continues on, all the fashion upwards to the top of the food chain. About 50% of the free energy (possibly as much every bit 90%) in nutrient is lost at each trophic level when an organism is eaten, so information technology is less efficient to be a higher order consumer than a primary consumer. Therefore, the energy transfer from i trophic level to the adjacent, up the food concatenation, is like a pyramid; wider at the base and narrower at the superlative. Considering of this inefficiency, there is merely enough nutrient for a few top level consumers, but there is lots of food for herbivores lower down on the nutrient chain. At that place are fewer consumers than producers.
Land and aquatic energy pyramids
| Trophic Level | Desert Biome | Grassland Biome | Pond Biome | Ocean Biome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Producer (Photosynthetic) | Cactus | Grass | Algae | Phytoplankton |
| Primary Consumer (Plant eater) | Butterfly | Grasshopper | Insect Larva | Zooplankton |
| Secondary Consumer (Carnivore) | Lizard | Mouse | Minnow | Fish |
| Tertiary Consumer (Carnivore) | Serpent | Snake | Frog | Seal |
| Quaternary Consumer (Carnivore) | Roadrunner | Hawk | Raccoon | Shark |
Food Spider web: At each trophic level, in that location may be many more species than indicated in the tabular array above. Nutrient webs can be very complex. Nutrient availability may vary seasonally or by time of day. An organism like a mouse might play two roles, eating insects on occasion (making it a secondary consumer), just also dining directly on plants (making it a main consumer). A food web of who eats who in the southwest American desert biome might look something like this:
prototype source: http://iqa.evergreenps.org/science/biology/ecosystem_files/food-web.jpg
Keystone Species: In some food webs, at that place is one critical "keystone species" upon which the entire system depends. In the same way that an curvation collapses when the keystone is removed, an unabridged food concatenation can collapse if there is a decline in a keystone species. Often, the keystone species is a predator that keeps the herbivores in check, and prevents them from overconsuming the plants, leading to a massive die off. When nosotros remove top predators similar grizzly bears, orca whales, or wolves, for example, there is evidence that information technology affects not just the casualty species, but even the physical environs.
Noon Predators: These species are at the top of the food chain and the healthy adults accept no natural predators. The young and one-time may in some cases exist preyed upon, but they typically succumb to illness, hunger, the furnishings of aging, or some combination of them. The also endure from competition with humans, who often eliminate the pinnacle predators in guild to have exclusive admission to the prey species, or through habitat destruction, which is an indirect form of competition.
Decomposers: When organisms dice, they are sometimes eaten by scavengers merely the remaining tissues are cleaved downward by fungi and bacteria. In this style, the nutrients that were part of the body are returned to the bottom of the trophic pyramid.
Bioaccumulation: In improver to being less energy efficient, eating higher upwards the nutrient chain has its risks. Pesticides and heavy metals similar mercury, arsenic, and pb tend to be consumed in small quantities by the main consumers. These toxins get stored in the fats of the animate being. When this animal is eaten by a secondary consumer, these toxins become more full-bodied because secondary consumers eat lots of primary consumers, and frequently live longer too. Swordfish and tuna are near the height of the aquatic nutrient chain and, when we consume them, nosotros are consuming all of the toxins that they have accumulated over a lifetime. For this reason, pregnant women are advised against eating these foods.
Solve the following problems mathematically.
1. Given: 10 billion people can be fed a basic vegetarian diet that is nutritionally complete. How many people could we feed at the American standard-a tertiary level of consumption (third order consumers?). 50% of the free energy is lost by each higher level.
2. If at that place are 250 million people in the United States most of them eating at the Third (3rd) level of consumption, how many people could nosotros feed at the Principal level?
3. Some animals like sharks are 5th order consumers! Sharks consume tuna that eat mackerel that eat herring that swallow copepods that swallow diatoms. If we were to make the reasonable assumption that each of these animals eats 2 of its prey each day, how many organisms died to feed the shark in ane day?
Source: https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/food_chain/food_chain.html
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