ecological pyramid
Sign in to saveAlso known as trophic pyramid, energy pyramid, eltonian pyramid, food pyramid
graphical representation designed to show the biomass or biomass productivity at each trophic level in a given ecosystem
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- Ecological pyramid
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- Piramida
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Encyclopedic overview
The pyramid of energy represents how much energy, initially from the sun, is retained or stored in the form of new biomass at each trophic level in an ecosystem. Typically, about 10% of the energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, thus preventing a large number of trophic levels. Energy pyramids are necessarily upright in healthy ecosystems, that is, there must always be more energy available at a given level of the pyramid to support the energy and biomass requirement of the next trophic level.
An ecological pyramid (also trophic pyramid, Eltonian pyramid, energy pyramid, or sometimes food pyramid) is a graphical representation designed to show the biomass or bioproductivity at each trophic level in an ecosystem.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “ecological pyramid” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.