Energy Flow in Ecosystems
History:
- Charles Elton (1920’s) - Energy flow links organisms to form the biological community (Elton’s pyramid of numbers)
- A.G. Tansley - first one to use term ‘ecosystem’. Plants and animals, together with their physical environment was a fundamental ecological system.
- Lotka - developed ecosystem concepts from considerations of energetics. Treated populations and communities as thermodynamic systems - thought each system could be represented by a set of eqn that could account for transformation of mass among compartments
- assimilation of CO2 by plants
- consumption of plants by herbivores
- consumption of animals by carnivores
- Raymond Lindeman -incorporated above ideas and portrayed ecosystem as a pyramid of energy. Less energy gets to the top because organisms expend energy
- Howard Odum (and Gene) - took a ‘system’ approach to ecology. Looked at energy flow through ecosystems using thermodynamic principles