Question

consider the following food chain: hawk - rabbit - clover. each species will contain a different amount of calories in its body (clover: 10 calories, rabbit: 500, and hawk: 1200). each species has a different daily caloric requirement (clover: sunlight, rabbit: 100 calories, hawk: 300). how many clover plants, per day, does it take to support one hawk?

Answer 1

To support one hawk per day, it takes 60 clover plants. This is calculated by accounting for the 10% energy transfer efficiency in the food chain from clover to rabbit and then from rabbit to hawk.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate how many clover plants, per day, it takes to support one hawk, we have to evaluate the efficiency of energy transfer within a food chain.

The student has mentioned that the energy content and daily caloric requirements for each species are: clovers have 10 calories per plant, rabbits require 100 calories per day, and hawks require 300 calories per day.

Since only about 10% of the energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, we can calculate the number of clovers needed to support a rabbit, and then how many rabbits are needed to support a hawk.

First, we support a rabbit which requires 100 calories a day.

Since each clover provides 10 calories, a rabbit needs 100 / 10 = 10 clover plants per day.

Then, to support a hawk (which requires 300 calories a day), we need to consider that a hawk feeds on rabbits; therefore, one rabbit will give 10% of its 500 calories to the hawk, which is 50 calories.

Therefore, the hawk needs 300 / 50 = 6 rabbits a day.

So, each rabbit needs 10 clovers, resulting in a total of 6 rabbits * 10 clover plants per rabbit = 60 clover plants per day to support one hawk.