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Sep 30, 2021 · A producer in an ecosystem is the baseline part of a food chain. Producers include plants, bacteria, algae and phytoplankton. Organisms that eat producers are called consumers, and organisms that consume dead organisms are called decomposers. They all participate in the complex web of an ecosystem.
- Roger Bloom
- Overview
- Key points:
- Introduction
- Producers are the energy gateway
- Primary productivity
- How does energy move between trophic levels?
- Ecological pyramids
- Energy pyramids
- Biomass pyramids
- Numbers pyramids
Learn about primary productivity, the (in)efficiency of energy transfer between trophic levels, and how to read ecological pyramids.
•Primary producers (usually plants and other photosynthesizers) are the gateway for energy to enter food webs.
•Productivity is the rate at which energy is added to the bodies of a group of organisms (such as primary producers) in the form of biomass.
•Gross productivity is the overall rate of energy capture. Net productivity is lower, adjusted for energy used by organisms in respiration/metabolism.
•Energy transfer between trophic levels is inefficient. Only ∼10% of the net productivity of one level ends up as net productivity at the next level.
•Ecological pyramids are visual representations of energy flow, biomass accumulation, and number of individuals at different trophic levels.
•Primary producers (usually plants and other photosynthesizers) are the gateway for energy to enter food webs.
•Productivity is the rate at which energy is added to the bodies of a group of organisms (such as primary producers) in the form of biomass.
•Gross productivity is the overall rate of energy capture. Net productivity is lower, adjusted for energy used by organisms in respiration/metabolism.
•Energy transfer between trophic levels is inefficient. Only ∼10% of the net productivity of one level ends up as net productivity at the next level.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if all the plants on Earth disappeared (along with other photosynthesizers, like algae and bacteria)?
Well, our beautiful planet would definitely look barren and sad. We would also lose our main source of oxygen (that important stuff we breathe and rely on for metabolism). Carbon dioxide would no longer be cleaned out of the air, and as it trapped heat, Earth might warm up fast. And, perhaps most problematically, almost every living thing on Earth would eventually run out of food and die.
Plants, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria act as producers. Producers are autotrophs, or "self-feeding" organisms, that make their own organic molecules from carbon dioxide. Photoautotrophs like plants use light energy to build sugars out of carbon dioxide. The energy is stored in the chemical bonds of the molecules, which are used as fuel and building material by the plant.
The energy stored in organic molecules can be passed to other organisms in the ecosystem when those organisms eat plants (or eat other organisms that have previously eaten plants). In this way, all the consumers, or heterotrophs ("other-feeding" organisms) of an ecosystem, including herbivores, carnivores, and decomposers, rely on the ecosystem's producers for energy.
If the plants or other producers of an ecosystem were removed, there would be no way for energy to enter the food web, and the ecological community would collapse. That's because energy isn't recycled: instead, it's dissipated as heat as it moves through the ecosystem, and must be constantly replenished.
Because producers support all the other organisms in an ecosystem, producer abundance, biomass (dry weight), and rate of energy capture are key in understanding how energy moves through an ecosystem and what types and numbers of other organisms it can sustain.
In ecology, productivity is the rate at which energy is added to the bodies of organisms in the form of biomass. Biomass is simply the amount of matter that's stored in the bodies of a group of organisms. Productivity can be defined for any trophic level or other group, and it may take units of either energy or biomass. There are two basic types of productivity: gross and net.
To illustrate the difference, let's consider primary productivity (the productivity of the primary producers of an ecosystem).
•Gross primary productivity, or GPP, is the rate at which solar energy is captured in sugar molecules during photosynthesis (energy captured per unit area per unit time). Producers such as plants use some of this energy for metabolism/cellular respiration and some for growth (building tissues).
•Net primary productivity, or NPP, is gross primary productivity minus the rate of energy loss to metabolism and maintenance. In other words, it's the rate at which energy is stored as biomass by plants or other primary producers and made available to the consumers in the ecosystem.
Plants typically capture and convert about 1.3 - 1.6% of the solar energy that reaches Earth's surface and use about a quarter of the captured energy for metabolism and maintenance. So, around 1% of the solar energy reaching Earth's surface (per unit area and time) ends up as net primary productivity.
Net primary productivity varies among ecosystems and depends on many factors. These include solar energy input, temperature and moisture levels, carbon dioxide levels, nutrient availability, and community interactions (e.g., grazing by herbivores)2 . These factors affect how many photosynthesizers are present to capture light energy and how efficiently they can perform their role.
Energy can pass from one trophic level to the next when organic molecules from an organism's body are eaten by another organism. However, the transfer of energy between trophic levels is not usually very efficient.
How inefficient? On average, only about 10% of the energy stored as biomass in one trophic level (e.g., primary producers) gets stored as biomass in the next trophic level (e.g., primary consumers). Put another way, net productivity usually drops by a factor of ten from one trophic level to the next.
For example, in one aquatic ecosystem in Silver Springs, Florida, the net productivities (rates of energy storage as biomass) for trophic levels were3 :
•Primary producers, such as plants and algae: 7618 kcal/m2/yr
•Primary consumers, such as snails and insect larvae: 1103 kcal/m2/yr
•Secondary consumers, such as fish and large insects: 111 kcal/m2/yr
We can look at numbers and do calculations to see how energy flows through an ecosystem. But wouldn't it be nice to have a diagram that captures this information in an easy-to-process way?
Ecological pyramids provide an intuitive, visual picture of how the trophic levels in an ecosystem compare for a feature of interest (such as energy flow, biomass, or number of organisms). Let's take a look at these three types of pyramids and see how they reflect the structure and function of ecosystems.
Energy pyramids represent energy flow through trophic levels. For instance, the pyramid below shows gross productivity for each trophic level in the Silver Springs ecosystem. An energy pyramid usually shows rates of energy flow through trophic levels, not absolute amounts of energy stored. It can have energy units, such as kcal/m2/yr , or biomass units, such as g/m2/yr .
Energy pyramids are always upright, that is, narrower at each successive level (unless organisms enter the ecosystem from elsewhere). This pattern reflects the laws of thermodynamics, which tell us that new energy can't be created, and that some must be converted to a not-useful form (heat) in each transfer.
Another way to visualize ecosystem structure is with biomass pyramids. These pyramids represent the amount of energy that's stored in living tissue at the different trophic levels. (Unlike energy pyramids, biomass pyramids show how much biomass is present in a level, not the rate at which it's added.)
Below on the left, we can see a biomass pyramid for the Silver Springs ecosystem. This pyramid, like many biomass pyramids, is upright. However, the biomass pyramid shown on the right – from a marine ecosystem in the English Channel – is upside-down (inverted).
Numbers pyramids show how many individual organisms there are in each trophic level. They can be upright, inverted, or kind of lumpy, depending on the ecosystem.
As shown in the figure below, a typical grassland during the summer has a base of numerous plants, and the numbers of organisms decrease at higher trophic levels. However, during the summer in a temperate forest, the base of the pyramid instead consists of a few plants (mostly trees) that are vastly outnumbered by primary consumers (mostly insects). Because individual trees are big, they can support the other trophic levels despite their small numbers.
May 25, 2024 · What is a Producer? Producers are creatures capable of synthesising basic carbohydrates like glucose from carbon dioxide gas. The creation of organic compounds from inorganic carbon sources is referred to as primary production.
Table of contents. What Are Producers in Biology? Organisms that manufacture their own food are known as producers or autotrophs. Energy from the sun or chemicals is one of the major ingredients of this food. With the help of water, producers convert this energy into sugar or food, which are usable forms of energy.
Producers are autotrophs, or organisms that produce their own food. Plants and algae are examples of producers. They are at the bottom of the food chain because they are eaten by other organisms, and they don't need to eat for energy. Producers make their own food through the process of photosynthesis instead of eating organic matter.
Nov 30, 2012 · Producers. Energy is the ability to do work. In organisms, this work can be physical work, like walking or jumping, or it can be the work used to carry out the chemical processes in their cells. Every biochemical reaction that occurs in an organism's cells needs energy. All organisms need a constant supply of energy to stay alive.
Autotroph (producer) An organism that produces its own food using sunlight or chemical energy: Heterotroph (consumer) An organism that consumes another organism for food: Food chain: A series of organisms in which energy is transferred to another: Food web: A network of feeding interactions, usually consisting of multiple food chains: Trophic level
