Final answer:
About 10% of the energy from producers is transferred to primary consumers. This low transfer efficiency is due to the loss of energy as heat during metabolic processes.
Step-by-step explanation:
About how much energy is transferred from a producer to a primary consumer? The energy transfer from producers, such as plants, to primary consumers, like herbivores, is generally estimated to be about 10% of the plant's energy. This low percentage is due to energy being lost as heat during metabolic processes. The majority of the solar energy captured by producers via photosynthesis does not make it to the primary consumers, because the producers themselves use some of this energy for their own life processes, such as respiration, growth, and maintenance.
The exact efficiency of energy transfer can vary depending on the ecosystem, but in a well-studied example like the Silver Springs ecosystem, the primary consumers are able to utilize about 14.8% of the energy from primary producers. The low efficiency of this energy transfer is influenced by the second law of thermodynamics, which explains the loss of energy as heat when one organism consumes another.