Monday, April 28, 2008

The Food Pyramid (Biomass Pyramid)

A biomass pyramid is another way to show which organism eats what. So it's kind of like a food web, but a biomass pyramid shows the energy flow too (I'll explain how this works).
A biomass pyramid looks like a pyramid for a start (or a triangle at least) and is divided into the amount of consumers (e.g. 4 for a chimpanzee's biomass pyramid; Fruits- insects- chimps- leopards). The layer at the very bottom is mainly the producers (plants). The reason why the layers get smaller as it goes to the top, is because of the amount of population of an organism needed to sustain the amount of energy for the organism (predator) above. E.g. 2 chimps are needed to feed 1 crocodile.

1 comment:

Mrs. Bonzarelli said...

GREAT EXPLANATION, RIOLU.

MRS. BONZARELLI