Final answer:
The 10% transfer of energy between trophic levels is best explained by the second law of thermodynamics, which states that energy transfers are not completely efficient and some energy is lost as heat, reducing the amount of energy available at higher trophic levels.
"the correct option is approximately option B"
Step-by-step explanation:
The student is asking about the concept that explains the ten percent transfer of energy between trophic levels in an ecosystem. The best explanation for this phenomenon comes from the second law of thermodynamics, not the first law. While the first law, also known as the law of conservation of energy, states that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system. Instead, energy is transferred or transformed from one form to another.
The second law addresses the efficiency of energy transfers and transformations, proposing that every transfer of energy involves some loss, usually as heat, which is not useful for work in biological systems; hence, no energy transfer is completely efficient, leading to a decrease in the amount of usable energy.
This loss of energy at each trophic level explains why only about 10% of the energy is transferred from one level to the next. When an organism eats another, a significant portion of energy is lost as metabolic heat when the organism carries out its life processes, and some is lost in the conversion of the prey's muscle or other tissues into the predator's biomass.
This low efficiency of energy transfer results in energy pyramids, where the amount of energy available decreases with each ascending trophic level. Therefore, b. the second law of thermodynamics best explains the 10% transfer of energy between trophic levels as it accounts for the loss of energy to the environment as heat during metabolic processes.