Energy flow

Energy flow
Have you ever wondered what would happen if all the plants on Earth disappeared (along with other photosynthesizers, like algae and bacteria)?
Well, our beautiful planet would definitely look barren and sad. We would also lose our main source of oxygen (that important stuff we breathe and rely on for metabolism). Carbon dioxide would no longer be cleaned out of the air, and as it trapped heat, Earth might warm up fast. Almost every living thing on Earth would eventually run out of food and die.
If the plants or other producers of an ecosystem were removed, there would be no way for energy to enter the food web, and the ecological community would collapse. That s because energy isn t recycled: instead, it s dissipated as heat as it moves through the ecosystem, and must be constantly replenished.
Producers are the energy gateway
Plants, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria act as producers. Producers are autotrophs, that make their own organic molecules from carbon dioxide. Photoautotrophs like plants use light energy to build sugars out of carbon dioxide. The energy is stored in the chemical bonds of the molecules, which are used as fuel and building material by the plant.
The energy stored in organic molecules can be passed to other organisms in the ecosystem when those organisms eat plants (or eat other organisms that have previously eaten plants). In this way, all the consumers, or heterotrophs of an ecosystem, including herbivores, carnivores, and decomposers, rely on the ecosystem s producers for energy.
Because producers support all the other organisms in an ecosystem, producer abundance, biomass (dry weight), and rate of energy capture are key in understanding how energy moves through an ecosystem and what types and numbers of other organisms it can sustain.