Final answer:
Three herbivores that solely eat plants are deer, rabbits, and caterpillars; their diets range from foliage and grasses to specific host plant leaves. Two food chains in the Savannah habitat are grass → zebra → lion and acacia tree → giraffe → leopard. Around 90% of energy is lost at each trophic level, which limits the number of these levels and makes it impossible for carnivores to surpass herbivores in biomass within a typical energy pyramid.
Step-by-step explanation:
Herbivores and Their Diet
Three animals that solely eat plants include the following:
- Deer: Deer primarily consume a variety of foliage, shoots, and sometimes bark from trees.
- Rabbits: Rabbits feed on a rich diet of grasses, clover, and some cruciferous plants like broccoli and brussels sprouts.
- Caterpillars: Many caterpillars are leaf-eaters, consuming leaves from a range of host plants specific to their species.
Food Chains in the Savannah Habitat
Example 1: Grass → Zebra → Lion
Example 2: Acacia tree → Giraffe → Leopard
These illustrate the flow of energy from the producers (plants) through herbivores to the top carnivores.
Energy and Trophic Levels
When an herbivore eats a plant, approximately 90% of the energy obtained from that plant is lost as heat or used for metabolic processes, contributing to energy loss between trophic levels. This is why it would not be possible to construct a pyramid where the biomass of carnivores was more than the herbivores. Each trophic level consumes energy in the form of food, which results in an energy decrease as one moves up the pyramid.
Due to this energy loss, the number of trophic levels is limited. A typical energy pyramid for the given forest community would have plants at the base (with the most biomass), the caterpillars as primary consumers, and birds as the secondary consumers occupying the higher, narrower portions of the pyramid.