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The efficiency with which energy or biomass is transferred from one trophic level to the next is called the ecological efficiency. Consumers at each level convert on average only about 10% of the chemical energy in their food to their own organic tissue (the ten-per cent law). For this reason, food chains rarely extend for more than 5 or 6 levels.
Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. [1] All living organisms can be organized into producers and consumers, and those producers and consumers can further be organized into a food chain. [2] [3] Each of the levels within the food chain is a trophic level. [1]
The transformity of energy becomes degraded, dispersed, and diminished from higher quality to lesser quantity as the energy within a food chain flows from one trophic species into another. Abbreviations: I=input, A=assimilation, R=respiration, NU=not utilized, P=production, B=biomass. [32] Food webs depict energy flow via trophic linkages.
The mean chain length of an entire web is the arithmetic average of the lengths of all chains in the food web. [13] The food chain is an energy source diagram. The food chain begins with a producer, which is eaten by a primary consumer. The primary consumer may be eaten by a secondary consumer, which in turn may be consumed by a tertiary consumer.
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...
Out of a total of 28,400 terawatt-hours (96.8 × 10 ^ 15 BTU) of energy used in the US in 1999, 10.5% was used in food production, [3] with the percentage accounting for food from both producer and primary consumer trophic levels. In comparing the cultivation of animals versus plants, there is a clear difference in magnitude of energy efficiency.
Within an ecological food chain, consumers are categorized into primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers. [3] Primary consumers are herbivores, feeding on plants or algae. Caterpillars, insects, grasshoppers, termites and hummingbirds are all examples of primary consumers because they only eat autotrophs (plants).
Food energy is chemical energy that animals (including humans) derive from their food to sustain their metabolism, including their muscular activity. [ 1 ] Most animals derive most of their energy from aerobic respiration , namely combining the carbohydrates , fats , and proteins with oxygen from air or dissolved in water . [ 2 ]