Final answer:
A food chain is ideal for studying the direct energy flow from one trophic level to the next, representing a linear sequence from producers to consumers.
Step-by-step explanation:
A food chain would be a more suitable tool than a food web for understanding the energy flow within an ecosystem, particularly when examining the transfer of energy from one trophic level to another in a clear, linear fashion. Unlike food webs, which demonstrate the complex and interconnected relationships among multiple organisms across different trophic levels, food chains represent a simplified sequence capturing the energy transfer from producers to successive levels of consumers. Thus, a food chain distinctly illustrates how energy moves from an organism in one trophic level to an organism on the next trophic level, which is the key concept in understanding energy flow in ecosystems.