Question

Please show all the work.

Suppose that the energy available in a certain plant population is 10,000 Joules. Calculate the proportion (percent) of that biomass that will be available as energy to the tertiary consumers in that ecosystem.

Answer 1

Answer-

According to the given question-

We know that the amount of energy that is present at each tropic level when transfer to another tropic level is decreased by about 10 percent in the ecosystem.

Plants are considered as the primary producer and they make their own food with the help of carbon dioxide and water in the presence of sunlight.

Order of tropic level –

Primary producers --->Primary consumers ---> secondary consumers --->tertiary consumer---> decomposers.

• Here we have a total energy of 10000 joules in plant or Primary producers, then energy transferred from Primary producers to Primary consumers = 10000 10 100 = 1000 joule.
• Energy transferred from Primary consumers to secondary consumers = 1000 10 100 = 100 joule.
• Energy transferred from secondary consumers to tertiary consumers = 100 10 100 = 10 joule.

So we have a total of 10 joules of energy at the tertiary level is present while the energy was 10000 joule at the primary producer.