AP Environmental Science

WheelerHigh School

Mr. Walstead

APES Food for thought…..Trophic levels

It Is 2023, Five years after the Zombie Apocalypse. You have claimed a piece of land and grow soybeans on it. You also raise guinea hens for food and insect control. The hens will eat grasshoppers and other insect pests, including ticks. This is good because biological control of your pests is essential since it is now virtually impossible to attain chemical pesticides. The hens also act as watchdogs squawking a lot when human intruders approach to steal your food or zombie intruders approach to eat you. You allow free range for the hens during the day in your fields and provide roosts for them at night.

Use the following for your calculations. Show all work with units!

  • You require 1500 calories/day to survive
  • A guinea hen requires 260 Calories/day to survive
  • A grasshopper requires .3 Calories per day to survive
  • A Zombie only requires 300 calories per day to survive because, after all, they are mostly dead.
  • Soybeans have about 3.3 Cal/g
  • Grasshoppers have about 2.32 Cal/g
  • Guinea hens have about 1.09 Cal/g
  • Human flesh has about 2.0 Cal/g

1. Calculate the number of grasshoppers a hen needs to eat per year. 1000 grasshoppers has a mass of about 1Kg

2. How many grasshoppersare needed for a year’s supply of hens for you, the farmer? (1 adult hen has about .87Kg of edible soft tissue)

3. What is the total mass in kg, of the grasshoppers needed to feed all the hens on your farmthat you need for one year?

4. How many kg of soybeans are needed to feed all the grasshoppersfor one year?

5. You found a tattered book about Native American culture. According to the author, tribes of the great plains frequently ate grasshoppers and that it is possible to collect about 900g of grasshoppers per hour, when they are abundant. If you collected for 2 hours on your land how many people could you feed?

6. Just considering calories alone,

a. How many grams of soybeans would you need to eat per day?

b. How many grams of grasshoppers would you need to eat per day?

c. How many grams of guinea hen would you need to eat per day?

7. If a zombie ate you, for how long could you support their caloric needs? (Humans are about 2/3 edible soft tissue)

8. In theory, the earth could support many more people if we ate at a lower trophic level.

a. List 2 benefits of doing this.

b. List 2 drawbacks of eating lower on the food chain.

9. Photosynthesis and respiration are complimentary processes. Explain how they exemplify the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics.

AP Environmental Science

WheelerHigh School

Mr. Walstead

APES Food for thought…..Trophic levels

It Is 2023, Five years after the Zombie Apocalypse. You have claimed a piece of land and grow soybeans on it. You also raise guinea hens for food and insect control. The hens will eat grasshoppers and other insect pests, including ticks. This is good because biological control of your pests is essential since it is now virtually impossible to attain chemical pesticides. The hens also act as watchdogs squawking a lot when human intruders approach to steal your food or zombie intruders approach to eat you. You allow free range for the hens during the day in your fields and provide roosts for them at night.

Use the following for your calculations. Show all work with units!

  • You require 1500 calories/day to survive
  • A guinea hen requires 260 Calories/day to survive
  • A grasshopper requires .3 Calories per day to survive
  • A Zombie only requires 300 calories per day to survive because, after all, they are mostly dead.
  • Soybeans have about 3.3 Cal/g
  • Grasshoppers have about 2.32 Cal/g
  • Guinea hens have about 1.09 Cal/g
  • Human flesh has about 2.0 Cal/g

1. Calculate the number of grasshoppers a hen needs to eat per year. 1000 grasshoppers has a mass of about 1Kg

2. How many grasshoppers are needed for a year’s supply of hens for you, the farmer? (1 adult hen has about .87Kg of edible soft tissue)

3. What is the total mass in kg, of the grasshoppers needed to feed all the hens on your farmthat you need for one year?

4. How many kg of soybeans are needed to feed all the grasshoppers for one year?

5. You found a tattered book about Native American culture. According to the author, tribes of the great plains frequently ate grasshoppers and that it is possible to collect about 900g of grasshoppers per hour, when they are abundant. If you collected for 2 hours on your land how many people could you feed?

6. Just considering calories alone,

a. How many grams of soybeans would you need to eat per day?

b. How many grams of grasshoppers would you need to eat per day?

c. How many grams of guinea hen would you need to eat per day?

7. If a zombie ate you, for how long could you support their caloric needs? (Humans are about 2/3 edible soft tissue)

8. In theory, the earth could support many more people if we ate at a lower trophic level.

a. List 2 benefits of doing this.

b. List 2 drawbacks of eating lower on the food chain.

9. Photosynthesis and respiration are complimentary processes. Explain how they exemplify the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics.