2.

02 Energy and Ecosystem Lab

August 28, 2016
Purpose: To investigate how biomass changes based on a real
world example
1. Identify the food chain in this scenario, beginning with the soybeans.
Use arrows to show the direction of energy transfer between each
organism.

Soybean

Grasshopp
er

Chicken

Farmer

2. Identify the producer(s) and consumer(s) in this scenario. Also identify

any herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores that are present. More than one
term might apply to an organism.

Soybean: Producer because it converts sunlight to energy and produces its

own food
Grasshopper: Herbivore primary consumer because it eats soybeans which
are producers
Chickens: Carnivore secondary consumers because they eat grasshoppers
Farmers: Omnivore tertiary consumers because they can all organisms listed

3. List four abiotic factors that would impact this food chain.

Temperature
Soil

4. Calculate the number of grasshoppers a chicken eats per year

(365 days).
25 grasshoppers/day x 365 days/year = 9,125 grasshoppers/year consumed
by the chicken
a. How many grasshoppers are needed for a years supply of
chickens for the farmer?
9,125 grasshoppers/year x 365 chickens/year = 3,330,625 grasshoppers
b. What is the total mass of the grasshoppers needed to feed all the
chickens for one year?
3,330,625 grasshoppers x 1 kg/1000 grasshoppers = 3,330.625 kg
grasshoppers
c. How many kilograms of soybeans are needed to feed all the
grasshoppers for one year?
3,330,625 grasshoppers x 30 grams = 99,918,750 grams = 99,918.75 kg of
soybeans
5.Suppose the farmer chose to eat grasshoppers instead of chickens.
How many people could the grasshoppers feed, compared to the one
person that the chicken fed?

Rainfall
Sunlight

9125 grasshoppers / 600 grasshoppers = 15.2 people for a day

6.The farmer needs to consume 3,000 calories per day. If he ate only
soybeans instead of the chickens or grasshoppers, how many people
would his soybean crop feed?
329,731,875 cal/yr per chicken/1,095,000 cal/ = 301.125 people

7.Create a Biomass Pyramid, using the data you have developed up

to this point. At each trophic level, record the biomass of the
organisms over a period of one year needed to support one farmer.
Assume that a farmer weighs 60 kg and a chicken weighs 1.5 kg. The
pyramid may be set up like this:

Fa
r
m
er
:
6
C h ic0k e n :
5 4 7k k g
g

G r a s s h o p p e r: 2 1 9
kg
S o y b e a n : 3 3 1 .8 k g

8. Should people eat at a lower trophic level? Outline three pros and
three cons of eating only plants and plant products.
People should eat at a lower trophic level in order to benefit the environment
and its resources for years to come.
Pros
Cons
Less biomass used
Less Diet Variety
Less resources used
Unbalanced Ecosystem
Feeds more people
Less Biodiversity

Summary: This lab shows how food chains are formatted, how energy
goes away as organisms get consumed, and how to compute the biomass
needed to feed different animals in the various trophic levels. The lab
helped analyzed a food chain consisting of soybeans, grasshoppers,
chickens, and farmers. Given data like the number of grasshoppers a
chicken eats in a day, and the number of chickens a farmer needs per
year, the number of soybeans needed to continue the food chain was
commutated at 99918.75 kg. Then I compared the results to the number
of people the grasshoppers could feed if the people ate them as their only
food source, and then the number of people soybeans could feed. These
computations showed that consuming at lower trophic levels would lower
the amount of biomass needed per person, so feeding more people and
using fewer resources seemed like a good idea of why to only eat plants