Question

in a small aquatic ecosystem, algae exists as the primary producer. if 5000 calories exist at the producer level, about how many calories would be transferred to the level of the tertiary consumer?

Answer 1

Answer: 5 calories

Explanation: This question is asking you to apply the 10% rule, which states that only 10% of the energy stored as biomass (food) is transferred to the next trophic level. A trophic level is the level an organism occupies in a food web/pyramid. I had a project about this a while back, and I'll attach the slide that talks about this. In the image, you can see that tertiary consumers only store 0.1% of the producer's energy. 0.1% of 5000 is 5.