Question

Pyramid of energy is always upright indicating that?
A. Producers have the lowest energy conversion efficiency
B. Carnivores have a better energy conversion efficiency than herbivores
C. Energy conversion efficiency is the same in all trophic levels
D. Herbivores have a better energy conversion efficiency than carnivores

Answer 1

Hint: The structure of biological systems can be imagined with environmental pyramids, which were first portrayed by the spearheading investigations of Charles Elton during the 1920s. Natural pyramids show the general measures of different boundaries, (for example, number of life forms, vitality, and biomass) across trophic levels.

Complete Answer:
- The energy pyramid reflects the sum of energy at each trophic step. In every ecosystem, the transfer of energy reduces as it moves from a lower to a higher trophic level. Thus the energy pyramid is still vertical, suggesting that herbivores have higher energy conversion ability than carnivores.
- Every successive trophic stage has less overall capacity. In this, energy is decreased from one trophic level to the next trophic level because energy is lost as metabolic heat during energy transfer. When food energy is moved from farmers to herbivores to carnivores, only 10 percentages of the energy is transferred from one trophic stage to another trophic level.

The right answer, therefore, is 'Herbivores have higher energy transfer performance than carnivores.'

Thus, the option (D) is correct.

Note: A pyramid of vitality shows how much vitality is held as new biomass at each trophic level, while a pyramid of biomass shows how much biomass (the measure of living or natural issue present in a life form) is available in the living beings.