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An ecological pyramid (also trophic pyramid, Eltonian pyramid, energy pyramid, or sometimes food pyramid) is a graphical representation designed to show the biomass or bioproductivity at each trophic level in an ecosystem. A pyramid of energy shows how much energy is retained in the form of new biomass from each trophic level, while a pyramid ...
A food pyramid and a corresponding food web, demonstrating some of the simpler patterns in a food web A graphic representation of energy transfer between trophic layers in an ecosystem. Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. [1]
An energy pyramid illustrates how much energy is needed as it flows upward to support the next trophic level. Only about 10% of the energy transferred between each trophic level is converted to biomass. In general, each trophic level relates to the one below it by absorbing some of the energy it consumes, and in this way can be regarded as ...
A three layer trophic pyramid linked to the biomass and energy flow concepts. In a pyramid of numbers, the number of consumers at each level decreases significantly, so that a single top consumer, (e.g., a polar bear or a human), will be supported by a much larger number of separate
The figure approximates the fraction of energy available after each stage of energy loss in a typical ecosystem, although these fractions vary greatly from ecosystem to ecosystem and from trophic level to trophic level. The loss of energy by a factor of one half from each of the steps of non-predatory death, defecation, and respiration is ...
energy pyramid A graphical representation designed to show the biomass or biomass productivity at each trophic level in a given ecosystem. environment The biotic and abiotic surroundings of an organism or population, and the chemical interactions between these factors that influence their survival, development, and evolution.
The definition of the trophic level, TL, for any consumer species is [6] = + (), where is the fractional trophic level of the prey j, and represents the fraction of j in the diet of i. In the case of marine ecosystems, the trophic level of most fish and other marine consumers takes value between 2.0 and 5.0.
Population, community, and physiological ecology provide many of the underlying biological mechanisms influencing ecosystems and the processes they maintain. Flowing of energy and cycling of matter at the ecosystem level are often examined in ecosystem ecology, but, as a whole, this science is defined more by subject matter than by scale.