How is energy transferred in a food chain?

Energy in a food chain is transferred through consumption, where one organism eats another to obtain energy. This process illustrates the flow of energy from producers, such as plants that convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis, to primary consumers like herbivores, which eat the plants. Then, energy continues to transfer to secondary consumers, such as carnivores that eat herbivores, and can eventually reach tertiary consumers.

In this way, each organism plays a role in the energy transfer, and this interconnectedness forms the structure of the food chain. The concept highlights how energy moves through ecosystems, starting from sunlight captured by producers and moving through various trophic levels as organisms consume one another. The other options describe important processes related to energy but do not directly capture the way energy transfer occurs specifically through food chains.