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Academic Year 2022 - 2023

Energy Flow / Decomposers / Changing Populations
NAME: ___________________ GRADE 8 ( )

SUBJECT: BIOLOGY

Energy Flow
➢ Food chains show what each animal eats, but they don’t show how many plants or
animals there are at each level.
➢ Pyramids of number show how many of each organism there are in a food chain.
The following example shows that leopards prey on impala, and impala feed on
grass.

➢ Pyramids of number don’t all have the same shape.

➢ Pyramids of number show the numbers of organisms at each level. They do not
show the amount of energy that is passed up from plants to predators.
➢ Energy is lost at each step in a food chain.

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➢ Pyramids of biomass are always shaped like pyramids because they show the mass
of living things at each trophic level – not their numbers.
➢ Only a fraction of the biomass in each trophic level is passed to the animals that
consume it. Most is used for respiration. So the total biomass in a higher trophic
level is always less than in a lower one.

Decomposers
➢ Decomposers break down animal waste and dead plants and animals. These
decomposers include fungi, bacteria, and invertebrates such as worms, slugs, snails
and fly larvae.

Recycling Carbon
➢ The food that plants make consists of carbon compounds. Some of these carbon
compounds are used for respiration. Others are passed to the next link in the food
chain.
➢ Each consumer uses some carbon compounds for respiration and others are passed
along the food chain.
➢ Respiration of all organisms in the food chain returns carbon dioxide to the air and
oceans.

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➢ Dead plants and animals are broken down by decomposers which also return
carbon dioxide to the air.
➢ When forests are cleared, decomposers break down the roots and branches left
behind. That is why deforestation adds a huge amount of carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere.

Changing Populations

➢ Population sizes are controlled by the amount of food available, and the numbers
killed by predators and diseases.
➢ A species with no predators can reproduce quickly until the large numbers cause
pollution , disease, or lack of food.

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➢ Predators improve the health of prey populations because they usually catch the
weakest and oldest animals. They also stop prey numbers rising so high to the
extent that they destroy their environment.
➢ Biodiversity is the number and variety of species present.
➢ Populations are more stable in environments that have a greater biodiversity such as
forests. Predators can eat several species of prey . If one of their prey disappears,
they simply change their diet.
➢ If a predator relies on one prey animal, we say that the predator and prey are
interdependent. Which means that they have a direct effect on one another.

Good Luck

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