Which of these is a consequence of biological magnification?
a. Toxic chemicals in the environment pose greater risk to top-level predators than to primary consumers.
b. Populations of top-level predators are generally smaller than populations of primary consumers.
c. The biomass of producers in an ecosystem is generally higher than the biomass of primary consumers.
d. Only a small portion of the energy captured by producers is transferred to consumers.

Question

Which of these is a consequence of biological magnification?

a. Toxic chemicals in the environment pose greater risk to top-level predators than to primary consumers.

b. Populations of top-level predators are generally smaller than populations of primary consumers.

c. The biomass of producers in an ecosystem is generally higher than the biomass of primary consumers.

d. Only a small portion of the energy captured by producers is transferred to consumers.

Accepted Answer

Hello everyone. And in today's video we have to follow in problem which of the following is true about biological magnification. So let me quickly remind you what biological magnification is before we jump into the problem. And this is a chemical transfer between toxins or other compounds that occurs in a foot chain from lower levels to higher traffic levels. And it leads to apex predators having the largest amount of concentration of these toxins or of these compounds in the food chain. And so now that we know this, let us go over these answer choices so that we can use this definition to select the correct one. So the first answer choice is a it is made up of molecules are excreted in bodies of complex organisms. This is not really biological magnification as it has to do with food webs as we were able to find here in our definition. So we're going to cancel it out. Now, answer Choice B has that the biomass becomes larger as body size increases. This also has nothing to do with food webs, so we're going to also cancel it out. We have answer choice C. Herbivores are generally safe from toxic chemical bio accumulation. This is actually incorrect because although these chemical transfer is most present in animals on top of the food chain because it happens from lower levels to higher trophic levels, these herbivores are still primary consumers. They consume what we call the primary producers which are usually plants and other producers. And so because of these these herbivores are not going to be safe from toxic chemical bio accumulation, they can still receive this. So this answer choice is actually going to be incorrect and all leaves us with a choice D molecules that accumulate in biomass concentrate at higher levels of the foot web. And this is exactly what we are talking about here. In our definition, these apex predators on top of the food chain are going to have the most concentrations of these molecules, and this is the process that is described by biological magnification. So we're going to highlight this as being our final answer. So, thank you very much for sticking around until the end of this video. I really hope it helped you.

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