ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES(ES)

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Lesson 12: Food chains, food webs and ecological pyramids

Pyramid of numbers

They show the relationship between producers, herbivores and carnivores at successive trophic levels in terms of their number. In a grass land ecosystem, the producers i.e. grasses are always maximum in number. This number shows a decrease towards the apex, as the primary consumers like rabbits, micre etc. are less in number than the grasses. Finally, the top consumers like hawks are least in number, thus, the pyramid becomes upright.