Question

Imagine you are an ecologist, and you do a census of all of the animal species within a particular ecosystem. You discover that the total combined populations of the tertiary consumer species in the ecosystem are a lot smaller than the combined total population sizes of all of the secondary consumers in the ecosystem. Should you be surprised?

Answer 1

Answer: No

Explanation: The number tertiary consumers will be less than the number of secondary consumers because as we move up in the ecological pyramid, the energy decreases.

The largest number of organism having the greatest amount of energy are producers.

They transfer only 10 per cent of the total energy they have. The primary consumers transfer only 10 per cent of the total energy they have to consumers.

The number of organism decreases along with increase in the tropic level of energy pyramid.