What Best Explains This Observation: Consumers Directly Use Approximately 20

question 39

Multiple Choice

What best explains this 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.