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Generally speaking, this loss occurs as heat energy.

Consider the laws of Thermodynamics:

Thermodynamics is the study of the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system. The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:

1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).

2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).

3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).

BUT IN REGARDS TO AN ECOSYSTEM...

Now, in an ecosystem I believe that energy fluctuates. Like energy from the sun during the day is stored in vegetation through photosynthesis, and heat will dissipate during the night. to name only two of many. This is because an ecosystem isn't a closed system so energy will come in and go out through various ways.

So perhaps what you should notice is that the 'loss' of energy isn't truly a loss. It perhaps means that energy 'in' is more than energy 'out' because energy will be stored within the ecosystem. i.e. biochemically.

The current idea is that energy can not be created or destroyed. All the energy in this universe is said to have come from the big bang in which of course we are inside of and is still expanding. The idea is that that expansion is increasing so in effect over time that big bang energy will be dispersed so thin that it would be useless. Another example is burning gasoline in a automobile. The gasoline is fossil fuel created millions of years ago from when a plant or animal decayed and stored its carbon solar energy that fell to earth way back then.( photosynthesis) When you release that energy in a combustion engine it is changed into mechanical energy that moves you down the highway but the exhaust into the atmosphere, the heat fiction on the highway from the tires is how that energy is dissipated and is no longer combustible, so is at a lower energy pontential not really lost to the universe but useless for driving a combustion engine.

The energy is lost in sound and heat. On that note energy can only be destroyed and created in a nuclear reaction, such as an A bomb explosion.

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed; merely converted from one form to another.

It is possible to create matter from pure energy (e.g. and electron and a positron) and vice versa but, as I understand the physics the sum total remains constant.

it cant be destroyed,loss of energy does not means energy has been lost,it only get transforms from one form of energy to another.this what is known as conservation of energy,"energy can neither be created nor destroyed".

Energy, in eco-system, is lost as heat during respiration and some passes out of the body of consumers as faeces or excretory products.

...energy is a bi-product of matter reacting to heat (or) gravity. Energy dissipates over time... Matter does not.

no it can only be transferred