Mon Prof Augmenté
Energy Pyramid of a Meadow
Age 18 · Biology
An energy pyramid stacks the feeding levels of an ecosystem, with plants that capture sunlight forming the wide base and top predators at the narrow peak. Only about 10% of the energy in one level passes to the level above, because most is used for living or lost as heat.
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In the picture
- Producers: grass and clover turn sunlight into chemical energy
- Primary consumers: the grasshopper eats the plants
- Secondary consumers: the frog eats the grasshopper
- Tertiary consumers: the heron eats the frog
Examples
- In the ocean, tiny phytoplankton feed krill, krill feed fish, and fish feed seals.
- Feeding people with crops directly needs far less farmland than feeding animals first and eating their meat.
Key takeaways
- About 10% of energy moves up each level; the rest is used or lost as heat.
- Because energy shrinks at each step, top predators are few and food chains rarely exceed four or five levels.
Quiz: Energy Pyramid of a Meadow (Age 18)
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Which organisms form the wide base of an energy pyramid?
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Why does only a small share of the energy in one feeding level pass to the level above?
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If the plants in a meadow capture 10,000 units of energy, about how much reaches the animals that eat plant-eating insects?
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