1. Chapter 2: Section 2
Energy Flow

2. Habitat: place where a population of
organisms live
Niche: function or role that organisms serve
in their habitat

3. -Tree squirrels eat nuts and seeds and live in nests or
dens in trees
-Chipmunks eat nuts and seeds and live in underground
burrows
Why can tree squirrels and chipmunks live in the same
habitat?

4. Every living thing needs energy. The source of all this
energy is sunlight.
Plants that use the energy from the sun to make their
own food through photosynthesis are called
producers.
All communities need food from producers for energy.
What are some producers you can think of?

5. Consumers: organisms that eat other organisms
for food
Different types of consumers
Herbivores: _animals that eat only plants
Carnivores: _animals that eat only other animals
Omnivores: animals that eat both animals and plants
Scavengers: animals that eat animals they find already
dead
What are humans? Explain your answer.

6. Decomposers: Organisms that get energy by
breaking down the remains of dead organisms
Decomposers are nature’s recyclers
They extract the last bit of energy from dead
organisms and break them down into simpler
materials like water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients
like oxygen and nitrogen
What are some decomposers?

7. Energy is transferred through a community by
food chains.
Look at Figure 2-14 on p.45 of the meadow
community food chain.
How is energy moving through that chain?

8. Each organism in a food chain uses some energy
to stay alive and stores some energy in its tissues.
How might energy be lost from the food chain?

9. Look back at Figure 2-14. Are grasshoppers the
only animal in a meadow that is going to eat grass?
Is grass going to be the only plant/producer that is
in the meadow?
Many food chains exist within a community. Take a
look at Figure 2-15. What is the producer here?
What are the consumers?

10. Consumers usually eat more than one type of food
and they themselves might be eaten by another
consumer.
This causes food chains to be connected to make
up a food web.
Let’s see what that looks like

11. Why is a food web a better representation of the
relationships between producers and consumers
than a food chain?

12. Community must have many more producers than
consumers because producers provide the energy
necessary for both themselves and the consumers.
As you get further away from the producers you lose
more and more energy. Each organism only stores
about 10% of the energy it consumes or makes.
This 10% is the only energy that the animal who eats
the organism will receive. This means that for every
step in the food chain, 90% of the energy is lost in
each step.

13. Figure from Chap 18 Sect 2 of New Life Science Textbook

14. There are 12,000 units of the sun’s energy available to grass at the
base of the energy pyramid. Grass stores 10% of the available energy
in its tissues, so that becomes available to the next consumer a rabbit.
The rabbit, a consumer of grass, stores 10% of the energy that was
stored in the grass.
A coyote, a consumer of rabbits, stores 10 percent of the energy that
was stored in the rabbit.
Calculate the unites of food energy store in the grass, the rabbit, and
the coyote.
Grass= 0.1 x 12,000= 1,200 units of energy stored in the grass
Rabbit= 0.1 x 1,200= 120 units of energy stored in the rabbit
Coyote= 0.1 x 120= 12 units of energy stored in the coyote

17. Is it possible for an inverted energy pyramid to exist? Why or why not?