Pyramid of Biomass - Practice Questions & MCQ

Pyramid of Biomass

• A pyramid of biomass takes into account, for a given unit area, the biomass of the producers, the biomass of the herbivores, the biomass of the first-level carnivores, and so on.
• The biomass of a single tree is naturally very higher than the biomass of a number of birds feeding upon the tree. Similarly, the biomass of even a very large number of bird parasites is lesser than that of the birds. Therefore, in an upright pyramid the biomass decreases with successive trophic levels.
• The pyramid of biomass in the sea is also generally inverted because the biomass of fishes far exceeds that of phytoplankton.
   

Pyramid of Energy

• A pyramid of energy shows the flow of energy from one trophic level of a community to the next. 
• The pyramid of energy represents the total amount of energy utilized by different trophic level organisms of an ecosystem in a limited area over a set period of time.
• Pyramid of energy is always upright, and can never be inverted, because when energy flows from a particular trophic level to the next trophic level, some energy is always lost as heat at each step. 
• Each bar in the energy pyramid indicates the amount of energy present at each trophic level in a