What is the relationship between a decrease in available energy to the producers and the overall ecosystem?
Answers
Nearly all of the energy that drives ecosystems ultimately comes from the sun. Solar energy, which is an abiotic factor, by the way, enters the ecosystem through the process of photosynthesis. You can learn more than you want to know about this process in the unit on photosynthesis. Or, you could just chat with your local botanist. Everyone has one, right? The organisms in an ecosystem that capture the sun’s electromagnetic energy and convert it into chemical energy are called producers. Not to be confused with these Producers.
The name is appropriate because producers make the carbon-based molecules, usually carbohydrates, that the rest of the organisms in the ecosystem, including you, consume. Producers include all of the green plants and some bacteria and algae. Every living thing on Earth literally owes its life to the producers. The next time you see a plant, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to thank it for its services...which, as you will learn in other units, go way beyond just supplying you with food.
After a producer has captured the sun’s energy and used it to grow yummy plant parts, other organisms come along and greedily gobble it up. These primary consumers, as they are called, exclusively feed on producers. If these consumers are human, we call them vegetarians. Otherwise, they are known as herbivores.
Primary consumers only obtain a fraction of the total solar energy—about 10%—captured by the producers they eat. The other 90% is used by the producer for growth, reproduction, and survival, or it is lost as heat. You can probably see where this is going. Primary consumers are eaten by secondary consumers. An example would be birds that eat bugs that eat leaves. Secondary consumers are eaten by tertiary consumers. Cats that eat birds that eat bugs that eat leaves, for instance.
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