Why does biomass get build up as it progresses through the food chain?

I dont really understand why biomass gets built up at each stage of the food chain. Here is the paragraph the teacher wrote about it


All biomass is built up using energy from the sun. Plants capture the Sun鈥檚 energy using chlorophyll and use it for photosynthesis to make food. Some of that food is stored as energy in substances which make up the plant cells. Energy in biomass made by plants is passed into animals which eat the plant 鈥?build up more biomass. That biomass passes into animals which eat other animals.|||I'm not exactly sure what your teacher is asking, but here is what I understand:





Primary producers or autotrophs, such as plants, are able to photosynthesize the radiation from the sun and turn it into energy. They spend this energy on two things: either building biomass, or respiration/maintenance. We're concerned about the biomass part--how much energy does a plant invest in building its own tissues or creating new offspring? When primary consumers, like insects, for example, eat primary producers such as plants, some of this energy (biomass) is converted into energy for the consumer. In that way, biomass is passed on from producers to consumers and so forth.|||I think (?) you teacher might be asking why is it the higher you go in the food chain the amount of biomass consumed increases.





Its because as you go up in the food chain the amount energy transported to the consumer is decreased. For example, plants get their energy from the sun (they have 100% of the energy). But a bug comes along and eats it. The amount of energy transfered from the plant to the bug is only 10% of the total energy the plant had. So to get the full amount of potential energy from the plant. The bug has to eat 10 plants. Lets just say the bug only ate one plant. Now a bigger bug eats that smaller bug. Its is only getting 10% of the amount of potential energy from that bug. So to get the total amount of energy that was in that original plant, big bug has to eat 100 bugs who ate one plant. This is why humans, who are really high on the food chain, have to consume so much biomass to satisfy our energy requirements and every trophic level below us has to eat less and less.





I think this is what she is looking for. Either way, hopefully it helps!