1. Trophic Pyramid
Learning Target: I can determine which trophic level each organism occupies and explain why.

2. Trophic Levels
Trophic levels are what position you hold in the food web.
The levels are known as:
Producer
Primary consumer
Secondary consumer
Tertiary consumers
Decomposer.

3. Trophic Levels
Producer: don’t eat other things. They make their own energy by using sunlight.
Primary consumer: when they eat producers.
Secondary consumer: when they eat primary consumers.
Tertiary consumers: when they eat secondary consumers.
Decomposer: break down and eat any dead organism.

4. Trophic Levels
Producer: don’t eat other things. They make their own energy by using sunlight.
Primary consumer: 1°C =when they eat producers.
Secondary consumer: 2°C = when they eat primary consumers.
Tertiary consumers: 3°C = when they eat secondary consumers.
Decomposer: break down and eat any dead organism.

5. Trophic Pyramids To organize a food web we make trophic pyramids.
All producers go on the bottom, primary consumers next, secondary consumers third and tertiary consumers on top of the pyramid.

6. Energy in Trophic Pyramids
TURN & TALK: If you eat a burger, are you giving the burger energy or is the burger giving you energy?
Energy moves up the trophic levels because the upper levels are eating the lower levels and using them for energy.
So which direction would energy move in a trophic pyramid? Up or down?

7. Energy in Trophic Pyramids
Energy gets lost at each level due to:
Energy getting transformed into other energy inside the consumer.
Not all of the food is eaten up.
Waste (feces, urine, respiration)

8. Biomass in Trophic Pyramids
Because energy is always moving up the trophic levels there has to be more, in numbers, of the lower levels.
Due to space available the lower levels have to be smaller in size and the upper levels get bigger and bigger.