Question

Explain why the carnivores in an ecosystem tend to be fewer in number and have a smaller biomass than the herbivores in the same ecosystem.

Answer 1

The food supply of the carnivores in an ecosystem is the available herbivores, so in order for the carnivores to survive for an extended amount of time their population must be considerably less than their food supply, so that there is an abundance of prey available. Populations of predator and prey have a cyclic increasing and decreasing relationship to regulate the number of both.