Energy Pyramid Quiz – Tap Each Trophic Level and Arrow

All 11 parts on the diagram

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The four tiers 4

Producers The first trophic level. Producers make their own food using sunlight.
Primary consumers The second trophic level. They eat producers, as a rabbit eats plants.
Secondary consumers The third trophic level. They eat primary consumers, as a fox eats rabbits.
Tertiary consumers The fourth trophic level. They eat secondary consumers.

Energy up, heat out 4

Energy passed up About 10 percent of the energy moves up a level.
Energy lost as heat Most of the energy at each level leaves as heat.
Autotrophs Living things that make their own food. Producers are autotrophs.
Heterotrophs Living things that eat other living things. Every consumer is a heterotroph.

Three kinds of pyramid 3

Pyramid of energy Compares the energy at each trophic level.
Pyramid of biomass Compares the mass of living things at each level.
Pyramid of numbers Compares how many living things are at each level.

How this list was compiled: Every name checked on 2026-10-01 in two independent sources. National Geographic Education encyclopedia entries (one source): Energy Transfer in Ecosystems, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/energy-transfer-ecosystems/ (food chains drawn as energy pyramids, a step for each trophic level with primary producers at the bottom; on average only about 10 percent of the energy passes up from each level; energy is changed to heat); Food Chain, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/food-chain/ (producers or autotrophs as the first trophic level, primary, secondary and tertiary consumers); Heterotrophs, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/heterotrophs/; Food Web, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/food-web/ (energy lost as heat or waste). Wikipedia: Ecological pyramid, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_pyramid (pyramid of energy, of biomass and of numbers; about 10 percent); Trophic level, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level (levels one to four; rabbits eat plants, foxes eat rabbits, golden eagles eat foxes; producers are autotrophs and consumers heterotrophs); Energy flow (ecology), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_flow_(ecology) (at each step energy is lost as heat). The three kinds of pyramid were also read in passages found by full-text search of the Internet Archive: Food Chains (1998), https://archive.org/details/foodchains0000silv, and Ecology: Science of Survival (1971), https://archive.org/details/ecologyscienceof0000unse. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-10-01 from plain geometry. Own original drawing; nothing is traced or copied. Licence: own work

How it works

The energy pyramid quiz asks eleven parts in one round, from the producers at the base to the pyramid of numbers.

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The tiers, by what is drawn on them

Grass grows on the producers, the widest tier. The rabbit stands on the primary consumers, the fox on the secondary consumers and the bird of prey on the tertiary consumers at the tip.

Two arrows, two brackets, three pyramids

A straight arrow that crosses from one tier up into the next is energy passed up. A wavy arrow that leaves the side of a tier is energy lost as heat. The short bracket beside the bottom tier marks the autotrophs, and the long one beside the three tiers above marks the heterotrophs. The last three questions are on a second drawing: flashes fill the pyramid of energy, weights the pyramid of biomass and dots the pyramid of numbers.

Producers are the first trophic level, so primary consumers are the second: the count of consumers starts one tier up.

Questions and answers

Where do decomposers go on an energy pyramid?

On no tier here: the drawing leaves them off. Decomposers such as fungi and bacteria break down the waste and dead matter of every level, and assigning them to one level is a known difficulty of ecological pyramids.

Can an energy pyramid be upside down?

Not where an ecosystem sustains itself: the lower levels must hold more energy than the higher ones. A pyramid of biomass can be inverted, as in a pond where the phytoplankton weigh less than the fish and insects. So can a pyramid of numbers.

Can an animal be on more than one trophic level?

Yes. Organisms often feed at more than one level, so real trophic levels are not always whole numbers. A fox can eat many kinds of animals and plants; the quiz draws it once, eating rabbits, as a secondary consumer.

What does the width of each tier show?

The rate at which energy flows through that trophic level. The steps get smaller toward the top because, at every step, some of the energy changes to a form the next level cannot consume.