I need to draw an energy pyramid for a five-step food chain. If 100% of the energy is available at the first trophic level, what percentage of the total energy is available at the highest trophic level?

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Answer 1 · 2016-01-22T00:56:27

Though not an absolute rule, the "rule of thumb" is that 10% of the energy flows to the next trophic level, and 90% is "lost" through metabolism.

factors of 10 are easy to work with, we just slide the decimal over:

level 1: 100%
level 2: 10%
level 3: 1%
level 4: 0.1%
level 5: 0.01%