PYRAMIDS
What are the three main types of ecological pyramids?
What are the pyramid of numbers, the pyramid of biomass, and the pyramid of energy?
What does a pyramid of numbers measure?
What is the number of individual organisms at each trophic level?
What does biomass mean?
What is the total mass of living organisms in a particular area or trophic level?
What does a pyramid of energy measure?
What is the amount of energy available at each trophic level?
In this food chain, identify the producer:
Grass → Grasshopper → Frog → Snake → Eagle
What is grass?
What do ecological pyramids show?
What is the relationship between organisms at different trophic levels?
Give one disadvantage of a pyramid of numbers.
What is it does not consider the size of organisms?
What is one advantage of a biomass pyramid compared with a numbers pyramid?
What is it takes the size and mass of organisms into account?
What happens to energy as it moves up trophic levels?
What is the amount of available energy decreases?
Which organism is the primary consumer?
Grass → Grasshopper → Frog → Snake → Eagle
What is a grasshopper
What is found at the bottom of most ecological pyramids?
What are producers, such as plants and algae?
Give an example where a pyramid of numbers could be inverted.
What is one large tree could support hundreds or thousands of insects?
Can a biomass pyramid be inverted?
What is yes, particularly in some aquatic ecosystems?
Name two ways energy is lost between trophic levels.
What is respiration and heat?
(or movement and waste.)
Which type of pyramid would you use to find the total mass of organisms at each trophic level?
What is the pyramid of biomass?
What generally happens as you move higher up an ecological pyramid?
What are the number of organisms, biomass, and available energy generally decreasing?
Why would counting organisms give a misleading result if an ecosystem contains very different-sized organisms?
What is a huge tree and a tiny insect would each count as one organism, even though their ecological importance and size are very different?
Why can aquatic ecosystems have an inverted biomass pyramid?
What is Phytoplankton reproduce and are replaced very quickly, so their standing biomass can be smaller than the biomass of the organisms feeding on them?
Why can a pyramid of energy never be inverted?
What is the energy is always lost as it moves between trophic levels, so there can never be more available energy at a higher level than at the level below it?
Which pyramid is considered the most accurate representation of flow, and why?
What is the pyramid of energy because it shows the amount of energy available and how energy is lost between trophic levels?
Why are ecological pyramids useful when studying ecosystems?
What is it allows us to visually compare trophic levels and understand how organisms, biomass and energy are distributed through an ecosystem?
A forest has 5 large trees supporting 5,000 insects. What could this cause in a pyramid of numbers?
What is it could produce an inverted pyramid because there are fewer producers than primary consumers?
Why might biomass give a better representation of an ecosystem than simply counting organisms?
What is it considers how much living material is present rather than treating every organism as equal in size.
Producers contain 20,000 kJ of energy, while primary consumers contain 2,000 kJ. What happened to most of the remaining energy?
Was it used or lost through processes such as respiration, heat production, movement and waste, rather than being transferred to the next trophic level?
Two ecosystems have the same number of organisms, but one has much larger organisms. Which pyramid would better reveal this difference, and why?
What is the pyramid of biomass, because it measures the total mass of organisms rather than simply counting them?