Living Things Need Energy The Energy Connection

Living Things Need Energy Producers: Organisms that use sunlight directly to make food. To do this, most do a process called photosynthesis. plants Trees bacteria grasses

Living Things Need Energy Consumers: Must eat producers or another consumer to get energy. Herbivore Carnivore Omnivore Scavenger

Weird Science Scavenger Turkey vultures have an acute sense of smell. A biologist once put decaying carcasses in metal containers, hid the containers in California foothills, and used a fan to diffuse the odor. Turkey vultures were soon soaring overhead. Engineers once pumped ethyl mercaptan, which smells like rotting flesh, into natural-gas lines. They located leaks by watching for turkey vultures attracted to the pipeline! Scavenger

Misconception Alert The North American black bear and the grizzly are not carnivores. They are omnivores. Besides eating mammals and fish, both bears eat berries and roots. Black bears also eat pine cones, acorns, and insects. Grizzlies sometimes even eat grass.

Decomposers Organisms that get their food by breaking down the remains of dead organisms. Bacteria Fungi Earthworms

Food Chain

Food Web

Math and More There are 12,000 units of the sun’s energy available to grass at the base of an energy pyramid. Grass stores in its tissues 10 % of the available energy, so that energy becomes available to the next consumer, a rabbit. The rabbit, a consumer of grass, store 10% of the energy that was stored in the grass. A coyote, a consumer of rabbits, stores 10% of the energy that was stored by the rabbit. Calculate the units of food energy stored in the grass, the rabbit, and the coyote.

Energy Pyramid Draw an energy pyramid for a river ecosystem that contain four levels; aquatic plants,insect larvae, bluegill fish, and a largemouth bass. The plants obtain 10,000 units of energy from the sun. If each level uses 90% of the energy it receives from the previous level, how many units of energy are available to the bass?

Is That a Fact In 1989, the National Conservancy purchased 30,000 acres of grassland in Oklahoma. The conservancy’s goal is “the restoration of a functioning tall-grass prairie ecosystem”. The land has been grazed by cattle but never plowed; the restoration will allow the more than 700 prairie plant species to reestablish themselves. A healthy prairie is also home to 300 bird species, 80 mammal species, and hundreds of thousands of insect species. Biologists have reintroduced bison, whose grazing is an integral part of the prairie food web.

Wolves and the Energy Pyramid Gray wolves are a consumer species that can control the population of many species. Their diet ranges from lizards to elk.

Wolves and the Energy Pyramid The wolves were almost wiped out with the settlement of the wilderness. This left species like the elk without control. That lead to overgrazing and starvation.

Wolves and the Energy Pyramid Yellowstone National Park has helped restore the gray wolves.

Wolves and the Energy Pyramid Read 12-13 Describe how the Gray Wolf is a consumer. What is the social structure of the Gray Wolf ? How do Gray Wolves nurture their young? Why are Gray Wolves needed in the Yellowstone food Web?

RETURN OF THE WOLF                                               After an absence of more than 50 years, the gray wolf (Canis lupus) once again runs beneath the night skies of Yellowstone National Park.