Question

If the energy transferred to a tertiary consumer in a food chain is 10 J, how much energy was available to the primary consumer?​

Answer 1

• A typical food chain is -​

Producers → primary consumers → secondary consumers → tertiary consumers​

• According to the ten percent law, only 10% of the energy is available to the organism in the succeeding trophic level.​

• So, maximum energy will be available to the producers and with 10% decrease in every succeeding trophic level, the tertiary consumers will get the least energy.​

• If 10 J of energy is available to the tertiary consumers, the secondary consumers will get 100 J of energy.​

• The primary consumers will thus get ​
  1000 J of energy.​