HELP! Science 10 points?

Question

Q1) in any food chain or food web the biomass of the producer is much larger than that of any other level of the pyramid. WHY IS THAT?

Q2) in any food chain or food web there are only a small amount of top carnivores. WHY IS THAT?

Answer 1

Your questions can actually be answered in one go, so here..

Producers directly receive energy from the sun, so they are able to a utilize a larger amount of it, as compared to the other secondary and tertiary consumers. Plants use up 90% of the energy to maintain itself and make itself grow. The remaining 10% is stored as biomass.

Of course, when the plant is eaten, the consumers would then use up 90% of the energy they consumed to maintain themselves and make themselves grow. Now, since at the first level, only 10% of the original energy from the sun was stored, that 10% was the only energy the consumers were able to take. So then, take 10% of 10% (1% of the original from the sun), and that is the biomass consumers are able to store in their bodies as biomass.

(Compare the biomass of the producer with the consumer. Obviously, the producer has more compared with the other.)

Again, this happens when that consumer is eaten by an even larger consumer. The energy transferred gets smaller and smaller as it goes up the food chain (because it was used for maintenance). This also means that as energy goes up the food chain, there is less energy to be spent on things other than body maintenance, meaning lesser energy for species reproduction.

Answer 2

Q2. There are only a small amount of top carnivores because they have to comepete for food. If there were too many competing there would not be enough food to go around and too many species would die out quickly due to lack of food.

The top carnivores don't reproduce often, if there were many at the top of the food chain there would be too many animals, and not enough to eat them or reduce the population.

Sorry I couldn't help with Q1, and I hope that answer is what you were looking for =]

Answer 3

1) They have the most energy since they usually produce it themselves and they usually reproduce very quickly.

2) They have to eat the most amount because they are only getting 10% of the energy from the animal they ate, so they need to eat 10 times as much.  Therefore there is more competition and a smaller population.

hope this helps!

Answer 4

for number one, check on to this site --> http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fanche...

for number two, check this --> http://www.vtaide.com/png/foodchains.htm