Question

According to the food web, little brown bats belong to which of the following trophic levels?

1) Primary consumers
2) Secondary consumers
3) Tertiary consumers
4) Decomposers

Answer 1

Little brown bats are tertiary consumers in the trophic levels because they eat insects, which are themselves consumers of plants or other organisms at lower levels.

Step-by-step explanation:

Little brown bats are considered to fall into the category of tertiary consumers in the trophic levels. This is because they typically feed on insects, which are themselves consumers of plants or other insects. Therefore, bats are at least one step removed from primary consumers, making them part of the third trophic level.

Understanding the trophic levels is essential in ecology as it explains the flow of energy through ecosystems. The first trophic level consists of producers, which are primarily plants that make their own food through photosynthesis. The second level, primary consumers, includes herbivores that eat plants. Secondary consumers come next, and these are carnivores or omnivores that eat the primary consumers. At the top are the tertiary consumers, predators who eat the secondary consumers, and play a vital role in controlling the population of other trophic levels.

Using the Lake Ontario ecosystem as a reference, we can see that bats, which consume insects that may be primary or secondary consumers, fit best into the category of tertiary consumers.