Final answer:
On average, only 10% of the energy at one trophic level is passed on to the next, with most energy being used or lost to the environment at each transfer, resulting in fewer organisms at higher levels.
Step-by-step explanation:
On average, only 10 percent of the total energy consumed in one trophic level is incorporated into organisms in the next level. The remaining 90% of energy is utilized for metabolism, growth, and repair, or lost to the environment primarily as metabolic heat. In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, there is a tendency towards increased entropy in each energy transfer, which results in a significant amount of energetic loss. This principle helps explain why ecosystems typically have fewer organisms and a lower biomass at higher trophic levels, as the energy available progressively diminishes.
The concept of biomass within ecosystems illustrates that the amount of living organic matter decreases as one moves up the trophic levels due to energy loss. This decrease in energy availability is so significant that there are rarely more than four trophic levels within a food chain or web, since the energy that remains after several transfers is usually insufficient to support additional levels of consumers.