Final answer:
The jackal will obtain only a fraction of the 30,000 kcal contained in the flowers eaten by the roadrunner because energy is lost at each trophic level in an ecosystem.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question relates to the concept of energy flow in ecosystems, particularly in a food chain where a predator, in this case a jackal, eats its prey, a roadrunner that has consumed flowers containing a certain amount of energy. In ecological systems, energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, but with a reduction at each level due to energy lost as heat and through biological processes. Therefore, the jackal will not receive the full 30,000 kcal that the flowers contain. It will only get a portion of the energy, as some will have been used by the roadrunner for its own metabolic processes. However, the exact amount of energy the jackal would obtain is not provided in the information given, since it requires specific data about the efficiency of energy transfer at each trophic level.