Question

The phytoplankton at the bottom of the pyramid take in and store a certain amount of the Sun's energy. Does all of the energy stored by the phytoplankton reach the top level of the pyramid?

Answer 1

The energy is passed on from trophic level to trophic level and each time about 90% of the energy is lost, with some being lost as heat into the environment (an effect of respiration) and some being lost as incompletely digested food (egesta). Therefore, primary consumers get about 10% of the energy produced by autotrophs, while secondary consumers get 1% and tertiary consumers get 0.1%. This means the top consumer of a food chain receives the least energy, as a lot of the food chain's energy has been lost between trophic levels. This loss of energy at each level limits typical food chains to only four to six links.

Answer 2

When the energy is passed from the tropic level, 90 percentage of total energy is lost. Some loss is due to evaporation, transpiration and by respiration into the environment. Primary consumers get about 10% of the total energy produced by autotrophs and the rest 1 percentage of total energy is passed to the secondary consumers. And 0.1 percentage of total energy is passed to the teriary consumers