BRAINCAKEProducers, Consumers and Decomposers
Every ecosystem depends on a flow of energy through organisms, which can be grouped by how they obtain their energy.
Producers are photosynthetic organisms, such as plants and algae. They use light energy to synthesise organic compounds from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or dissolved in water in aquatic ecosystems. This transfers energy into the chemical energy store of their biomass. Most of the sugars they make are used as respiratory substrates; the rest are used to make other biological molecules such as starch, cellulose, lipids and proteins.
Consumers obtain energy by eating other organisms. Primary consumers (herbivores) eat producers. Secondary consumers eat primary consumers, and tertiary consumers eat secondary consumers.
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More in Energy and Ecosystems
- Trophic Levels
- Biomass
- Measuring Biomass - Dry Mass
- Calorimetry and Chemical Energy in Biomass
- Gross Primary Production
- Net Primary Production
- NPP = GPP - R
- Net Production of Consumers
All 14 lessons in Energy and Ecosystems · All AQA A-level Biology topics