Plant Structure and Function

YOU ARE LEARNING:

Photosynthesis and the Pyramid of Biomass

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants create energy for themselves.

What is the name of the process where plants and algae use energy from sunlight to make glucose?

Photosynthesis is the process where plants use sunlight as a form of energy to allow a chemical reaction to occur, where they make their own food in the form of glucose.

Photosynthesis is a very important energy transfer. If glucose is a stored form of energy called chemical energy, then what do you think the energy transfer is that plants carry out?

So plants and algae are really very important! They can use a form of energy, that other organisms are unable to use, to make food for themselves. Plants can become food to other organisms if they are eaten.

What do you think could be a great name for plants?

So we call plants producers because they can convert energy from sunlight into glucose. Plants use some of the glucose for example in respiration, but some will be stored as biomass. Biomass is the biological material that makes up a living organism (like a body, or the structure of a plant).

Plants use some of the glucose they make, what is the rest of the glucose stored as if not used straight away?

How do you think organisms such as rabbits increase their own biomass?

What the name for an animal that only eats other animals?

Carnivores only eat other animals, so their biomass increases as they obtain biomass from other animals. Where did the original source of biomass come from?

The amount of total biomass from the organisms at each feeding level can be put into a special diagram called a pyramid of biomass.

What do you think happens to the amount of biomass from the producers to the herbivores that eat the producers? Increase or Decrease?

Therefore the photosynthetic organisms are the main producers of food and of biomass in the whole world. Even if animals only eat other animals, the original source of biomass came from a plant that was eaten by an animal, that was eaten by another animal.