What is how much energy do consumers obtain when they eat what happened to the rest?

Consumers obtain only a fraction of the energy stored in the organisms they consume. This is due to several factors, including:

• Inefficient Energy Transfer: Energy transfer between trophic levels is never 100% efficient. A significant portion of the energy is lost as heat during metabolic processes like respiration.
• Unused Biomass: Consumers cannot digest all parts of their food. Indigestible materials like cellulose in plants or bones in animals are egested as waste. This represents energy that is not assimilated by the consumer.
• Energy Used for Life Processes: A large portion of the energy assimilated by a consumer is used for its own life processes, such as movement, growth, reproduction, and maintaining body temperature. This energy is eventually lost as heat.
• Excretion: Metabolic waste products are excreted through urine and feces. These waste products contain energy that is not available to subsequent trophic levels.

Typically, only about 10% of the energy available at one trophic level is transferred to the next. This is known as the "10% rule."

What Happens to the Rest?

The energy that isn't transferred to the next trophic level is primarily lost as:

• Heat: Released during metabolic processes and dissipated into the environment.
• Waste: Egested as undigested material (feces) or excreted as metabolic waste (urine).
• Unconsumed Biomass: Organisms die without being eaten and their biomass goes to Detritus.

This lost energy is eventually recycled back into the ecosystem, primarily by decomposers (bacteria and fungi). Decomposers break down dead organisms and waste products, releasing nutrients back into the environment. While decomposers extract energy from this process to sustain themselves, the remaining energy is dissipated as heat, completing the cycle.