Lecture 3.

4
Energy in Ecological
Environment: Energy
Partitioning in Food
Chains and Food Webs and
Concept of Productivity
Prepared By: P.E.C.Denosta – CS BPS Faculty
Energy Partitioning in Food Chains and Food
Webs and Concept of Productivity
• Transfer of food energy from its source in autotrophs (plants) through a series of organisms that consume and are
consumed is termed the food chain.
• Each transfer, a proportion (often as high as 80 or 90 percent) of the potential energy is lost as heat.
• The shorter the food chain or the nearer the organism to the producer trophic level, the greater the energy
available to that population.
• Quantity of energy declines with each transfer, the quality or concentration of the energy that is transferred
increases.
• Food chains are of two basic types.
 (1) the grazing food chain, which, starting from a green plant base, goes to grazing herbivores (organisms
eating living plant cells or tissues) and on to carnivores (animal eaters); and
 (2) the detritus food chain, which goes from nonliving organic matter to microorganisms and then to
detritus-feeding organisms (detritivores) and their predators
• Food chains are not isolated sequences; they are interconnected. The interlocking pattern is often spoken of as the
food web.
Figure 1. Typical Food Chains and Food Web in Terrestrial Ecosystem
Energy Partitioning in Food Chains and Food
Webs
• In complex natural communities. organisms whose nourishment is obtained from the Sun through the same
number of steps are said to belong to the same trophic level.
• Green plants occupy the first level (the producer trophic level), plant eaters (herbivores) occupy the second level
(the primary consumer trophic level), primary carnivores occupy the third level (the secondary consumer trophic
level), and secondary carnivores occupy the fourth level (the tertiary consumer trophic level).
• Trophic classification is one of function and not one of the species as such. A given species population may
occupy one or more trophic levels according to the source of the energy actually assimilated.
Figure 2. Simplified energy flow diagram depicting three
trophic levels in a linear food chain. Standard notations for
successive energy flows are as follows: Light absorbed by
plant cover; GPP = gross primary production; A: total
assimilation; NPP - net primary production; SP: secondary
(consumer) production i NIJ = energy not consumed by next
trophic level; E: energy not assimilated by consumers
(egested); I = input (or ingestion); I = standing crop biomass;
and R = respiration. Bottom line in the diagram shows the
order of magnitude of energy losses expected at major transfer
points, starting with a solar input of 4000 kcal per square meter
per day.
Energy Partitioning in Food Chains and Food
Webs
• Primary productivity of an ecological system is the rate at which radiant energy is converted by the photosynthetic
and chemosynthetic activity of producer organisms (chiefly green plants) to organic substances.
• Four (4) successive steps in the production process as follows:
 Gross primary productivity (GPP)
 Net primary productivity (NPP)
 Net community productivity
 Secondary productivities
• Gross primary productivity (GPP) – Total rate of photosynthesis, including the organic matter used up in
respiration during the period of measurement also known as total photosynthesis.
• Net primary productivity (NPP) – The rate of storage of organic matter in plant tissues that exceeds the
respiratory use, R, by the plants during the period of measurement also termed as net assimilation. In practice, the
amount of plant respiration is usually added to measurements of net primary productivity to estimate gross
primary productivity (GPP = NPP + R).
• Net community productivity – The rate of storage of organic matter not used by heterotrophs (that is, net primary
production minus heterotrophic consumption) during the period under consideration, usually the growing season
or a year.
Energy Partitioning in Food Chains and Food
Webs
• Secondary productivities – the rates of energy storage at consumer levels. Because consumers use only food
materials already produced, with appropriate respiratory losses, and convert this food.
• Energy to different tissues by one overall process, secondary productivity should not be divided into gross and
net amounts. The total energy flow at heterotrophic levels, which is analogous to the gross productivity of
autotrophs, should be designated assimilation and not production.
• Productivity and the phrase rate production may be used interchangeably.
• Even when the term production designates an amount of accumulated organic matter, a time element is always
assumed or understood (for instance, a year in agricultural crop production).
• Time interval should always stated to avoid confusion.
• In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, the flow of energy decreases at each step due to the heat
loss occurring with each transfer of energy from one form to another.

Example: High rates of production, in both natural and cultured ecosystems, occur when physical factors are
favorable, especially when
Energy Partitioning in Food Chains and Food
Webs
• Energy subsidies (such as fertilizers) from outside the system enhance growth or rates of reproduction within the
system. Such energy subsidies may also be the work of wind and rain in a forest, tidal energy in an estuary, or the
fossil fuel, animal, or human work energy used in cultivating a crop.
• ln evaluating the productivity of an ecosystem, you must consider the nature and magnitude not only of the
energy drains resulting from climatic, harvest, and pollution and other stresses that divert energy away from the
production process but also from the energy subsidies that enhance it by reducing the respiratory heat loss (the
"disorder pump-out") to maintain the biological structure.
• The keyword in the preceding definitions is rate. the "time element that is, the amount of energy fixed in a given
time must be considered.
• Biological productivity differs from yield in the chemical or industrial sense.
• Energy In industry, the reaction ends with the production of a given amount of material.
• In biological communities, the production process is continuous in time, so a time unit must be designated (e.g
the amount of food manufactured per day or per year).
• Highly productive community may have more organisms than a less productive community, this is not so if
organisms in the productive community are "removed or "turnover" rapidly.
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