1. Energy in Ecosystems

2. Food Chains Energy transfers through either Food Chains or Food Webs Food Chain -- Linked feeding series. –Shows how nutrients flow from one organism to another and are recycled. –Terrestrial food chains are typically shorter than aquatic food chains.

3. Arrows always point to the predator. Producer at the beginning!

4. I ♥ POOP! (Nutrient cycling!)

5. What’s wrong with this one? (Really, Encyclopedia Brittanica!)

6. Food Webs Show ALL the connections and potential food chains of a set of organisms.

7. Make a Food Web Create a food web from the following wetland creatures: Eagle Algae SnailFish

8. Make a Food Web Create a food web from the following wetland creatures: Eagle Algae SnailFish

9. Trophic Levels Trophic Level - Expression of an organisms feeding status in a food chain or web.

10. Trophic Levels Organisms can also be identified by the type of food they consume: –Herbivores (Plants) –Carnivores (Meat) –Omnivores (Plants/Meat) –Scavengers (Carcasses) –Detritivores (Debris) –Decomposers(All Dead Material)

11. Ecological Efficiency The 1 st Law of Thermodynamics is the Law of Conservation of Energy –When energy is converted from one thing to another, no energy is created or destroyed…it is simply converted! –Energy is not lost…but the energy in the conversion may NOT be usable for the task at hand (in the case of a food chain, the energy may not be used in the body that consumed it)

12. Ecological Efficiency Due to 2 nd Law of Thermodynamics, energy transfer from one trophic level to the next reduces the amount of usable energy available. –Metabolism of food releases some energy as heat (not usable) –So, predator efficiency < 100% –10% Rule -- generally, 10% of the energy in a lower trophic level is usable in the next level 100 kg clover –10 kg rabbits »1 kg foxes

13. What do you notice about this actual food pyramid? 5% energy transfer 16% energy transfer 9% energy transfer

14. Vegetarianism It is said that vegetarianism is one of the top three things that someone could personally do to be more “green” in their life that has the most impact. WHY???? --- Think about this in terms of the ecological efficiency rule just mentioned! CREEPY!!!

15. Vegetarian Food Chain Human  Duckweed 100 kcal1,000 kcal Meat Eating Food Chain Human  Walleye  Minnow  Duckweed 100 kcal 1,000 kcal 10,000 kcal 100,000 kcal –Each time you go up a trophic level in a food chain, most of the starting energy is lost in the form of heat. The more levels up, the more cycles of energy loss.

16. What Can You Do? Try not to eat meat every dang minute of the dang day! –Try Meatless Mondays!

17. How Does Energy Even Make It Into Food Chains? Discuss with someone these questions: –What biological process is primarily involved with getting energy into food chains? –State what materials are required to have to make this process above work. –State what materials would be released from this process.

18. Plants Don’t Get No Respect Generally, plants and algae are KEY to life on Earth, as they start most food chains. (except for deep ocean ecosystems) How do plants do it? PHOTOSYNTHESIS!! 6 CO 2 + 6 H 2 O + light  C 6 H 12 O 6 + O 2

19. What happens with the food? All life, even plants, take their food (glucose) and can make energy out of it. This is called cellular respiration. Aerobic respiration looks like this: C 6 H 12 O 6 + 6 O 2  6 CO 2 + 6 H 2 O + energy Hmmmm…is there a pattern to these processes?...Hmmm

20. Some Ecosystems Make More Plant Matter (Biomass) Than Others Two Ways to Measure Ecosystem Productivity –GPP (Gross Primary Productivity) – measures how fast producers turn solar/chemical energy into biomass (organisms). –NPP (Net Primary Productivity) – measures how much leftover energy is made, after you subtract out the energy needed for cellular respiration –Think of these in business terms: GPP is your gross salary in a year ($60,000/year) NPP measures the leftover money you have after you pay expenses ($60,000 – $40,000 in expenses = $20,000 net).

21. Which have the highest GPP (simply make a lot of biomass)?

22. Oceans make the most biomass – thus allowing these things to exist!!

23. What ecosystems have the highest NPP (highly productive and efficient systems – have energy left over to grow extensive food webs)?

24. Who cares about NPP? NPP is the limiting factor determining how many consumers can be on Earth. Humans use 20-30% of Earth’s NPP. Humans only represent 1% of biomass of Earth’s consumers. This is main reason the environment is out of balance.

26. NORMAL FOOD CHAIN In the normal ecosystem, there are 2 predominant food chains using the previous 7 organisms. Fill in each one and check to see if you got it correct. #1: _____  _____  _____  ______ #2: _____  _____  _____

28. HUMAN ALTERED FOOD CHAIN Humans, of course, screwed it up. So, how? –They overfished. We like the taste of cod toooooooooo much! So, we took all of them out of the water. –Knowing that overfishing is the start of this food chain’s situation (Jersey Shore…woo hoo), write a short explanation of how the otters got affected by this first domino falling.

29. HUMAN ALTERED FOOD CHAIN