Energy Loss in Food Chains

Trophic level transfer efficiency describes how much energy moves from one level of a food chain to the next. It shows why energy drops sharply as organisms eat and are eaten. In most ecosystems, only about 10% of the energy passes on.

This energy loss follows the second law of thermodynamics. In...

As energy flows through the trophic levels in an ecosystem, large amounts are lost in the form of heat as the energy is transformed from one form to the next, the second law of thermodynamics.

In a temperate forest ecosystem, the energy available to the primary consumers by primary producers is about 6000 kilocalories per square meter pe...