Labs / Biology
Energy Pyramid
Sunlight feeds the plants, plants feed the grazers, and grazers feed the predators — but only about a tenth of the energy survives each step upward. Tap a species to wipe it out, drag between two levels to add a feeding link, or click a link to cut it, and watch the shrinking pyramid and the cascade of crashes.
Producers 20,000Herbivores 2,000Predators 200Transfer 10%Crashed none
What to try
- The pyramid loses roughly 90% of its energy at every level. Why can the meadow feed so many grasshoppers but only a handful of hawks?
- Remove the rabbit — the food source at the center of the web. Which predators starve, and which survive on other prey?
- Slide transfer efficiency from 5% up to 25%. How much does the predator level grow when each meal delivers more usable energy?
- Cut every link leading to a single producer. Does the energy it captured just vanish from the ecosystem?
- Switch from grassland to wetland. Does more incoming sunlight change the shape of the pyramid, or only the numbers on it?