"In a classic study, John Teal measured energy flow in a salt marsh ecosystem. The table below shows some of his results.a. What percentage of the energy in sunlight was converted into chemical energy and incorporated into plant biomass? What term describes this new biomass?b. What percentage of the energy in plant biomass was incorporated into the bodies of the primary consumers? What became of the rest of the energy (see Figure 37.16A)?c. How much energy is available for secondary consumers? Based on the efficiency of energy transfer by primary consumers, estimate how much energy will be available to tertiary consumers."

Hey everyone, let's take a look at this question together at each trophic level of the food chain. How does the total amount of energy change? Let's recall what we know about the trophic levels of the food chain and how the energy changes between them to figure out which of the following is the correct answer. We know that when we have the trophic level of the food chain, we start at the bottom with our producers and then from our producers, we have our primary consumers and after our primary consumers we get our secondary consumers and then we also have our tertiary consumers. And so in this trophic level diagram of a food chain, we know that this is the flow of energy meaning the energy gets transferred from the producers to the primary consumers then from primary to secondary, secondary to tertiary and so on. And we know that the Consumption is that primary consumes the producers and then secondary consumes primary and tertiary consumers, secondary and so in this flow of energy when the primary consumers consume the producers and so on and so forth. The amount of energy that is transferred between each trophic level is not the same. So it is not 100% meaning that here you could have x percent change of energy as well as here and here because some of that energy that is transferred between each trophic level is actually lost. Um Energy is lost and it is lost as heat because as we know when there is a transfer of energy there is that production of heat and so some of that energy is lost as heat. And so because the amount of energy that is transferred between each trophic level is not the same. The amount of energy decreases or answer Choice C. And it decreases because some of that energy that is used to consume the previous level is lost in the reaction as heat. So answer choice C. Is the correct answer. I hope you found this video to be helpful. Thank you and goodbye.