Study the food chain given below and answer the questions that follow:
Question (A)
If the amount of energy available at the third trophic level is 100 joules, then how much energy will be available at the producer level? Justify your answer.
Answer:
The amount of energy available at each trophic level follows the 10% rule rule, which means that approximately 10% of the energy from one trophic level is transferred to the next trophic level. The rest is used by the organisms to carry out various life processes and some is lost as heat.
If the third trophic level has 100 joules of energy, the producer trophic level will have 10000 joules of energy.
Question (B)
Is it possible to have 2 more trophic levels in this food chain just before the fourth trophic level? Justify your answer.
Answer:
It is not possible to have 2 more trophic levels after the 4th trophic level because the loss of energy at each level is so high that very little usable energy will remain.
