As I walked around my park I was looking for the topic we discussed in class. This topic was energy. Where do I see energy in this park? The answer is everywhere, but I really wanted to focus on the secondary energy that goes into the forest. The trees take in energy from the sun and convert it into food to grow. This process is the same for the squirrels that eat the acorns the tree drops the squirrels eat the food and take in the calories in order to grow. One big thing to this is that each time the energy is passed from one organism to another only 10% of the energy is passed on.
This means 90% of the energy that the berry or nut took in is not being used to make the squirrel grow. This happens too when we may hunt and then eat the squirrel. We are only eating and absorbing 10% of what the squirrel ate its entire life. This can be a big deal because eventually a ways down the line maybe 5 or 6 with the consumers and the predators there is not a abundance in how many of these predators there are. This is because they need to eat so many of the organisms below them to get the necessary energy to grow and there may not be enough of the lower food chain to go around.
This is called the food pyramid. The chain below keeps the chain above in check by not letting their numbers get out of control. This energy transfer can happen from trees to any herbivore and then get passed on to any omnivore or carnivore that is a predator to the consumer below it.
http://www.mlms.loganschools.org/~mlowe/EnergyPyramid.gif
http://students.ed.uiuc.edu/jtulley/EnergyFlow.html
