Can the amount of available energy in a given trophic level be larger than the available energy in inferior trophic levels? What does that condition means to the conformation of the energy pyramids?
A superior trophic level always has less available energy than inferior trophic levels. This is because in each trophic level only a fraction of the organic material of the level below is incorporated into the consumers (into their bodies). The other part is eliminated as waste or is used in the metabolism as energy source. Therefore it is never possible to have energy pyramids with inverted conformation, i.e., with the tip to the bottom and the base to the top. It is also not possible to have superior trophic levels with a variable dimension larger than inferior ones. In every energy pyramid, from the base to the top, the size of the variable dimension decreases.
