A tertiary consumer, such as a red-tailed hawk, receives what percent of the energy fixed by primary producers in a typical field ecosystem?

Question

Biology

Giana Frederick

23 April, 21:24

A tertiary consumer, such as a red-tailed hawk, receives what percent of the energy fixed by primary producers in a typical field ecosystem?

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Answers (2)

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Addison Conley · Answer 1

Assuming a 10% trophic efficiency, the herbivore (primary consumer) will get 10% of the producer energy. Then, the second consumer that eat the herbivore will get 10% of the primary consumer energy, so it is 10%*10% = 1% of the primary producers.

Then, the t ertiary consumer should get 0.1% of the primary producers' energy.

Olivia Goodman · Answer 2

Since only 10 percent of energy obtained in one trophic level is successfully passed to the next trophic level in the case of the tertiary consumer (the organism that is in the third trophic level) the organism will obtain only 1 percent of the initial energy.

For example, a plant would obtain the energy from the radiation of the sun, 10% of that will be passed to a field mouse that eats the plant, and the 10% of the 10% or 1% of the initial energy would be obtained by the hawk.