Energy in the Environment Energy Roles and Energy Flow
Jan 17, 2016
Energy in the Environment
Energy Roles and Energy Flow
NGSS Standard
• MS-LS2-e. Conduct an investigation of the cycling of matter among living and nonliving parts of ecosystems to support the explanation of the flow of energy and conservation of matter.
Energy
• Think back to our discussion of predator-prey relationships.
• What is the main benefit for the predator in the organism relationship?
Energy
• The main benefit from a predator-prey relationship for the predator, is that the predator gains food from it’s prey.
• This food will eventually will be broken down by the predator and use for energy.
• What is the process that takes food and gives an organism energy?
Energy
• Energy usage is a need of living things and as a result plays a large role in the environment.
• All organisms fill out a specific energy role in an ecosystem.
• The organism’s energy role is determined by how the animal obtains energy and interacts with other organisms.
Energy Roles
• Producers
• Consumers
• Decomposers
Producers
• Most energy enters ecosystems through sunlight. This energy is then captured by certain consumers and stored as food energy, through photosynthesis.
• All organisms that produce their own food are called producers.– This includes plants, algae, and some
bacteria.
Consumers
• Obtain their food by feeding on other organisms.
• Consumers are classified by what they eat.– Herbivores– Carnivores– Omnivores– Scavenger
Decomposers
• Break down wastes and dead organisms and return the raw materials found in these organisms to the ecosystem.
• If we did not have decomposers the raw materials of life would stay locked up in organisms and would never be re-circulated in the environment.
• Serves as the “recyclers” of the ecosystem.
Energy
• How do you think energy is transferred between organisms?
Food Chains and Food Webs
• Energy is transferred to from organism to organism.
• Consumers eat producers, other consumers eat the first consumers and so on…
• The flow of this energy can be diagramed by food chains and food webs.
Food Chain
• A series of energy transfer in which one organism eats another and obtains energy.
• Food chains are not very realistic.
• Think back to our lion example last week how many food sources did it have?
Food Webs
• Are multiple overlapping food chains.
• These are more realistic because organisms can serve as food for many organisms.
Energy
• After looking at energy transfers do you think energy is available in equal amounts?
• Think about how energy comes into the ecosystem.
Energy
• Energy availability is not equal at every level.
• Organisms will use 90% of the energy they obtain for life functions or lost as heat to the environment.
• About 10% of the energy stored in an organism will be passed onto the next organism.
Energy
• Since only 10% of energy is transferred from organism to organism, ecosystems are limited to the number of consumers they can support.
• Note: just because top level consumers receive less energy when they feed, that does not mean they require less energy.
• In most cases they require more energy than other consumers.
Review
• How are consumers classed?
• How is energy transferred between organisms?
• What does an energy pyramid represent?
• How does energy enter an ecosystem?
• What are food chains and food webs?
• Which level of the energy pyramid contains the most energy?