An analysis of food chains and the energy flow within an ecosystem provides important understanding of contingencies and mutual dependencies of organisms. The following visual depicts the energy flow within some members of a grassland ecosystem.
The grass in the above ecosystem transducer 120,000 J of sunlight and fixes it into 12,000 J of energy. It is established that 90% of the energy of one trophic level is not passed to the next trophic level. Further assume that the energy transferred from one trophic level to the next is equally shared among the different organisms at that trophic level.
(I) How many food chains are present in the food web depicted above ?
(II) Based on the above information, indicate the amount of energy that an organism (A to F) may have received from an organism from the previous trophic level.
(III) In the food web depicted above, identify the most energy efficient link for tertiary consumer ?
