A biologist studies an ecosystem and finds that it has very few trophic levels. What can you conclude about this ecosystem

Question

Biology

Sariah Kline

21 November, 08:10

A biologist studies an ecosystem and finds that it has very few trophic levels. What can you conclude about this ecosystem

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Answers (2)

Know the Answer?

Josh Manning · Answer 1

It is not a stable ecosystem. Undefined

Byron Noble · Answer 2

Stable ecosystem

Explanation:

Considering the Lindeman's rule of energy transfer, nearly 10% of energy is transferred from one trophic level to other and rest 90% is used by an organism for carrying out biological process. Thus, if a food chain is small, it will have few trophic levels and therefore the energy transferred to the apex organism will be sufficient to carry out its biological activities. However the energy transferred to an apex organism in a long food chain is relatively lesser that the requirement and in such scenario the apex animal may try to extract energy from other sources which shall make the ecosystem unstable