What Best Explains the Following Observation: Consumers Directly Use Approximately

question 69

Multiple Choice

What best explains the following observation: consumers directly use approximately 20 percent of a forest's net primary productivity (NPP) ,whereas decomposers directly use approximately 80 percent?

• A) Decomposers are more efficient at obtaining energy than consumers.
• B) Forest ecosystems do not have a very high NPP, so they cannot support as many consumers as other ecosystems can.
• C) Consumers eat only certain parts of organisms, such as fruits or muscle tissue, whereas decomposers obtain energy from the entire body of the food organism.
• D) Secondary consumers eat the primary consumers more quickly than the primary consumers can eat the producers, thus leaving most of the NPP available to the decomposers.

---

Definitions:

Chemical Elements

Substances that cannot be chemically broken down into simpler substances and are the primary constituents of matter.

DNA

The molecule that encodes genetic information in the nucleus of cells, determining the structure, function, and behavior of living organisms.

Junk DNA

A term formerly used to describe portions of the DNA sequence that do not encode for proteins, though many such regions are now known to have regulatory functions.

Gene Function

The specific biological role or activity of a gene product (either RNA or protein), which can influence an organism's traits and is essential for understanding genetics and molecular biology.