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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
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.