Trophic levels

     Today in class, we did an activity called Trophic Levels. In this activity, we viewed five different ecosystems. The following were: Deciduous, Hot Desert, Grasslands, Antarctic Ocean Shore, and Freshwater Lake. On these ecosystems, we were given a list of all sorts of organisms and we had to drag them individually to the trophic level they belonged to. As we did, we had to click "check" to see if our guess was correct or not. If it wasn't it would go back to the list. Throughout the activity we had to fill out our chart that went along with the activity and write down where the organisms belonged to. After that there was a button that says "Pyramid of Energy" and it gave us a number representing the energy of each level. We also had to write that down as well.
     What I noticed about the different trophic levels are that in the third order Heterotrophs (Tertiary Consumers), there weren't as many animals as the levels below it. My guess is that that small amount can eat everything below it and there aren't so many animals that can do that. For example, Killer whales or Hawks. The other levels including: Producers, Primary Consumers, and Secondary Consumers were basically even in terms of how many animals belonged there. Another observation I made was that as the trophic levels kept getting higher the energy would begin to decrease. In example of the ecosystem of Deciduous, the producers had an energy of 6,011, next group had 623, the secondary consumers had 61, and the tertiary had 6. What I can infer about this that when producers share their energy with the levels above them, so of it is lost towards heat and etc. As the energy moves up, only about 10% of the initiated energy goes up.