ECOLOGY
ENERGY FLOW AND PRIMARY PRODUCTION
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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Sunlight could be blocked from producers.
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The amount of producers is limited.
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Carnivores are too large to be consumed.
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Energy is lost when you move up a trophic level
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Detailed explanation-1: -Why is there a limit to the number of levels that a food chain can reach? Plants are not infinite in number. Producers are limited by consumers . Carnivores are too large to be eaten.
Detailed explanation-2: -The different feeding positions in a food chain or web are called trophic levels. Generally, there are no more than four trophic levels because energy and biomass decrease from lower to higher levels.
Detailed explanation-3: -A food chain describes how energy and nutrients move through an ecosystem. At the basic level there are plants that produce the energy, then it moves up to higher-level organisms like herbivores. After that when carnivores eat the herbivores, energy is transferred from one to the other.
Detailed explanation-4: -There is only 10% flow of energy from one trophic level to the next higher level. The loss of energy at each step is so great that very little usable remains after four or five trophic levels. Hence only 4 to 5 trophic levels are present in each food chain.