Comment on the difficulty of describing a virus as a living organism.

You can't describe a virus as a living organism...it's not living!

A virus needs a host to survive and replicate itself to create a illness. It invades a cell by attaching itself onto it and injects its DNA into the cell. Afterwards, the cell bursts and creates the new virus replica. Every cell that is affected by a virus always dies.

multiple allele inheritance is traits controlled by more than 2 alleles (ex: pigeons having 3 alleles of one gene govern their feather color).   so the answer is a.

only about ten percent of the energy at one trophic level is passed on to organisms at the next trophic level. the remainder of the energy is used in life processes or lost as heat.