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  4. In a grassland ecosystem, if the number of primary producers (plants) is approximately 6 million, the number of top carnivores, which may be supported by them will be

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Q. In a grassland ecosystem, if the number of primary producers (plants) is approximately 6 million, the number of top carnivores, which may be supported by them will be

NTA AbhyasNTA Abhyas 2020

Solution:

In grassland ecosystems, the number of producers is maximum. Producers thus can support fewer herbivores and herbivores can support still fewer carnivores and so on. Thus, the number of top carnivores is too small to support any other trophic level and does not act as prey to any other organism. Therefore, the grassland pyramid of numbers is always upright and erect. So if the number of primary producers is approximately 6 million plants, then the number of top carnivores must be less than 6 million. Hence, according to the options given, there would be 3 million top carnivores.