Answer to Question #291136 in Ecology for Kelsey Jand

Question

How does energy move up the food chain, how does the amount of usable energy change?

Answer 1

Primary producers use energy from the sun to produce their own food in the form of glucose, and then primary producers are eaten by primary consumers who are in turn eaten by secondary consumers, and so on, so that energy flows from one trophic level, or level of the food chain, to the next.

Energy decreases as it moves up trophic levels because energy is lost as metabolic heat when the organisms from one trophic level are consumed by organisms from the next level.