Ecological Pyramids: Numbers, Biomass & Energy

Every ecosystem can be described by four trophic levels — producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers and tertiary consumers — but the classic "pyramid" you draw from those levels depends on what you measure. This simulator renders all three ecological pyramids in 3D from the same underlying trophic-efficiency, turnover-rate and body-mass model, and lets you switch between four real ecosystem archetypes: a grassland food chain where every pyramid stays upright, an ocean plankton chain where fast-turnover phytoplankton produce an inverted biomass pyramid, a forest canopy where a few huge trees support an inverted pyramid of numbers, and a parasite chain where numbers explode upward from host to hyperparasite. Live sliders for trophic transfer efficiency and producer turnover rate let you watch a pyramid invert or straighten out as you change the underlying ecology, with numeric readouts for every level plus overall ecological efficiency and the top-to-base ratio.