AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Consumers, or heterotrophs, get organic molecules by eating other organisms. A food chain is a linear sequence of organisms through which nutrients and energy pass as one organism eats another.

Detailed explanation-2: -Consumers are organisms that eat other organisms for energy. Consumers may eat producers or other consumers. Animals are consumers.

Detailed explanation-3: -Producers can make their own food and energy, but consumers are different. Living things that have to hunt, gather and eat their food are called consumers. Consumers have to eat to gain energy or they will die. There are four types of consumers: omnivores, carnivores, herbivores and decomposers.

Detailed explanation-4: -Primary producers use energy from the sun to produce their own food in the form of glucose, and then primary producers are eaten by primary consumers who are in turn eaten by secondary consumers, and so on, so that energy flows from one trophic level, or level of the food chain, to the next.

Detailed explanation-5: -All living organisms have a feeding pattern. As all the food chains start with a producer, food energy gets transferred from producers to herbivores and later to carnivores. To each next level, only 10% energy is passed on. Therefore with each step the energy flow decreases.