What is a producer and a consumer?
Producers are organisms that get their energy from nonliving resources. They make their own food. On the other hand, consumers get their energy by eating other living or once-living resources. Producers serve as the starting point for energy flow in an ecosystem. They create energy, and then they are eaten by consumers, who are then eaten by other consumers. Energy flows as organisms consume each other.
In the Amazon Rainforest
- Producers:
- Producers in the Amazon Rainforest are extremely important. When primary consumers consume the producers, the energy from the producers is transferred to the herbivores, and then throughout the food chain. The abundance of producers in the Amazon provides energy for the abundance of consumers (Food)
- Kapok Trees, Coconut Trees, Bengal Bamboo Trees, Strangler Figs, Mango Trees, Banana Trees
- Consumers:
- Primary (Herbivores): Macaws, Monkeys, Grasshoppers, Sloths, Toucans, Leaf-Cutter Ants, Fruit Bats, and Owl Butterflies
- Primary consumers consume the plants of the Amazon, and the energy they obtain from the plants is then transferred to secondary consumers, and so on (Plants)
- Secondary (Omnivores): Iguanas, Anteaters, Fish, and Frogs (What)
- Tertiary (Carnivores): Pythons, Anacondas, Piranhas, Egrets, and Jaguars (Butler Wildlife)
- Primary (Herbivores): Macaws, Monkeys, Grasshoppers, Sloths, Toucans, Leaf-Cutter Ants, Fruit Bats, and Owl Butterflies
- Decomposers: decompose dead organism, allowing that organism's nutrients to return to the soil
- Example: Velvet Worm (Bender)
- Scavengers: get their food by eating dead organisms
- Example: King Vulture (Bender)
- Flow of Energy:
- Begins with producers. Almost all producers turn sunlight into energy, and that energy is transferred to consumers.
- Energy pyramids-show the flow of energy through different trophic levels. Producers would be at the bottom, and they supply energy to consumers above them.
- Food web-shows a complex network of energy transfer and feeding relationships in an ecosystem. A primary consumer may obtain energy from several different producers, and a food web would show this.
- Energy transfer-not 100% because organisms must expend energy in order to perform certain functions. Therefore, all of the energy that an organism consumes does not stay with that organism. (Nowicki)
What is the Carbon Cycle?
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