Question

What fraction of the assimilated energy is used in respiration by the herbivores?
a. 10 percent
b. 60 percent
c. 30 percent
d. 80 percent

Answer 1

Hint: Energy flow in the ecology is also called a calorific flow, which refers to the flow of energy through the food chain, and most of the ecologists in this field are mainly focused on study in the ecological energetics.

Complete answer:
- Solar energy on the earth is usually fixed by the photoautotrophs, which are called primary producers, they include all green plants.
- Primary consumers or herbivores, which eat plants as food, where all the energy stored in the food is digested and is absorbed and it is converted to ATP in respiration, apart from this energy, some energy is lost from the body as a form of heat during respiration, the heat lost is more in the cold-blooded animals, compared to warm-blooded. And some form of energy is also lost in the form of feces.

Whereas secondary consumers, usually consume the primary consumers or herbivores, whereas omnivores also consume herbivores, in this process the stored energy of herbivores is utilized by the secondary consumers, where they obtained the energy in form of ATP through respiration, while they cannot utilize the energy that lost as heat. And in this stage also some part of the energy is going to the ecosystem.

Whereas tertiary consumers consume food on secondary consumers or carnivores and the Same thing, repeated where the energy is lost from one trophic level to other levels
- Decomposers break the organic matter and release the nutrients to the soil.
- So in the food web link, for every trophic level, 90% of energy is lost
- So primary consumers-- 10%
- Secondary consumers--1%
- Tertiary consumers--0.1%

Hence, the correct answer is option (A).

Note: So one can understand that, from the above explanation, at each trophic level, the maximum amount of the food is lost through body heat and excretion to the ecosystem, and top members of the food pyramid obtain very less energy.