Question

Less than 0.1% of the energy in a food chain generally makes it from the sun to quaternary consumers.


Please select the best answer from the choices provided

True or false

Answer 1

True.

Explanation: Only about 10% of energy is passed from one trophic level to the next. After four transfers (to quaternary consumers) you get ~10^(-4) = 0.01% of the energy available to the producers — and since producers capture only a small fraction of incoming solar energy (often ~1% or less), the fraction of original sunlight reaching quaternary consumers is far below 0.1%.