What is "ecological pyramid"

n. A diagram that shows the relative amounts of energy or matter, or numbers of organisms within each trophic level in a food chain or food web.

An ecological pyramid (also trophic pyramid, eltonian pyramid, energy pyramid, or sometimes food pyramid) is a graphical representation designed to show the biomass or bio productivity at each trophic level in a given ecosystem.

Biomass is the amount of living or organic matter present in an organism. Biomass pyramids show how much biomass is present in the organisms at each trophic level, while productivity pyramids show the production or turnover in biomass.

Energy pyramids begin with producers on the bottom (such as plants) and proceed through the various trophic levels (such as herbivores that eat plants, then carnivores that eat herbivores, then carnivores that eat those carnivores, and so on). The highest level is the top of the food chain.

An energy pyramid of biomass shows the relationship between biomass and trophic level by quantifying the biomass present at each trophic level of an energy community at a particular time. It is a graphical representation of biomass (total amount of living or organic matter in an ecosystem) present in unit area in different tropic levels. Typical units are grams per meter, or calories per meter. The pyramid of biomass may be "inverted". For example, in a pond ecosystem, the standing crop of phytoplankton, the major producers, at any given point will be lower than the mass of the heterotrophs, such as fish and insects. This is explained as the phytoplankton reproduce very quickly, but have much shorter individual lives.

One problem with biomass pyramids is that they can make a trophic level appear to contain more energy than it actually does. For example, all birds have beaks and skeletons, which despite having mass are not eaten by the next trophic level.

There is also pyramid of numbers which represent the number of organisms in each trophic level. They may be upright (e.g. Grassland ecosystem), inverted (parasitic ecosystem) or dumbbell shaped (forest ecosystem).