Question

(a) Explain the significance of ecological pyramids with the help of an example
(b) Why are the pyramids referred to as ‘upright’ or ‘inverted’?

Answer 1

Hint:Ecological pyramids represent a graph-based representation of a pyramid exhibiting the feeding relationship of organism groups. This pyramid helps in analysing the energy or the biomass flow at every trophic level within the dimensions of a particular ecosystem.

Complete answer:
(a)The significance of the ecological pyramid is as follows –
It is a graphical representation of feeding relationships exhibited by certain groups of organisms.
This is often presented in a way where the producers stand at the lower level which are subsequently proceeded through various trophic levels.
This pyramid also reflects the energy or biomass flow across each trophic level within a particular ecosystem.
Such pyramids are constructed in a way representing that the biomass concentration accounts the highest at the pyramid base but decreases subsequently as it proceeds further.
Biomass pyramids are of two basic types – the upright one and the inverted one.
While the upright ones are found spread across most of the ecosystems, the inverted ones are rare. The former one represents a combined weight of the producers being larger than that of the consumers; the latter represents vice versa.

(b)The ecological pyramids are classified into two broad categories – upright or inverted. The categorization of these ecological pyramids is dependent on number and biomass or any other related factor exhibiting gradation from the level of the producer to the level of the consumer.
Upright Pyramid –
Energy pyramid is always available in an inverted form as here the energy flows from one particular trophic level to the next trophic level. At every step, some amount of energy is always released in the form of heat. So, every subsequent energy level exhibits low energy that the energy present in the previous trophic level. Thus, we have upright pyramids such as energy pyramids.
Inverted Pyramid –
An inverted pyramid can be found in a wide array of ecosystems as it does not take into consideration the organism’s biomass. The ecosystem features a wide array of inverted pyramid of numbers where the community features a very low number of producers along with a very large biomass count supporting a large count of smaller consumers.

Note:There are four different kinds of biomass or ecological pyramids – trophic pyramid, energy pyramid, eltonian pyramid, and energy pyramid.