Question

Part of the energy is lost as low quality head at level of the food chain. What is the reason for this loss of energy?

1) Energy is lost due to inefficient conversion processes
2) Energy is lost due to heat dissipation
3) Energy is lost due to metabolic activities of organisms
4) Energy is lost due to environmental factors

Answer 1

Energy is lost at each trophic level in a food chain mainly as metabolic heat, with only 10 percent transferred to the next level, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics.

Step-by-step explanation:

At each trophic level in a food chain, energy is lost mainly as heat due to metabolic activities and during the transfer of energy from one organism to another. This is because only about 10 percent of the energy at one trophic level is passed up to the next higher trophic level, with the other 90 percent being used by organisms for their metabolism, which generates heat, hence lost to the environment. In addition, some energy is also lost through excretion of incompletely digested food. These losses within the ecological system conform to the second law of thermodynamics, which suggests that energy conversions are accompanied by an increase in disorder or entropy, demonstrating that not all energy is converted into biomass.