answers: carrying capacity
context: their food to their own organic tissue (the ten-percent law). For this reason, food chains rarely extend for more than 5 or 6 levels. At the lowest trophic level (the bottom of the food chain), plants convert about 1% of the sunlight they receive into chemical energy. It follows from this that the total energy originally present in the incident sunlight that is finally embodied in a tertiary consumer is about 0.001% Both the number of trophic levels and the complexity of relationships between them evolve as life diversifies through time, the exception being intermittent mass extinction events. Food webs </s> equal to between 2.4% and 8.1% of the carbon in plants. The mentioned current value (≈70 billions of tonnes of carbon) was published in May 2018. Estimates for the global biomass of species and higher level groups are not always consistent across the literature. The total global biomass has been estimated at about 550 billion tonnes C. Most of this biomass is found on land, with only 5 to 10 billion tonnes C found in the oceans. On land, there is about 1,000 times more plant biomass ("phytomass") than animal biomass ("zoomass"). About 18% of this plant biomass is eaten </s> the given organism and its environment. Below carrying capacity, populations typically increase, while above, they typically decrease. A factor that keeps population size at equilibrium is known as a regulating factor. Population size decreases above carrying capacity due to a range of factors depending on the species concerned, but can include insufficient space, food supply, or sunlight. The carrying capacity of an environment may vary for different species and may change over time due to a variety of factors including: food availability, water supply, environmental conditions and living space. The origins of the term "carrying capacity" are uncertain, with researchers
question: which term represents the maximum number of individuals an ecosystem can support