PrepTest 101, Section 4, Question 20
When the same habitat types (forests, oceans, grasslands,(450 more words not shown)
With which one of the(21 more words not shown)
- AThe time theory(21 more words not shown)
- BThe rate-of-speciation hypothesis(8 more words not shown)
- CThe major objection(27 more words not shown)
- DDespite the claims(24 more words not shown)
- EAn important advantage(17 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The author's clearest position is that the fourth explanation is the most plausible. I'd start there, while remembering why the other three were questioned: uneven climatic disruption, uncertain links between energy and diversity, and local coexistence failing to explain regional species pools.
What we’re looking for
This is a broad agreement question, so we may need a connection between those ideas rather than a simple repetition of the preference.
Working the answers
- A
The author doesn't rank the time theory last. Its stated problem also concerns uneven disruption in temperate regions and uninterrupted arctic conditions, not a mistaken account of tropical ice ages.
- BCorrect
The objection to climatic stability is that local processes do not create a region’s supply of species (paragraph 4). Explaining how existing species share resources leaves unanswered where the surrounding region's different species came from.
The fourth theory addresses that missing piece: isolated groups survive, adapt, and become new species. The third theory explains coexistence; the fourth explains how the supply of species grows. That is how it answers the principal objection.
- C
Undiscovered species suggest the overall gradient is steeper than current records show. That isn't the author's objection to the time theory, which concerns whether past climatic disruption explains the pattern.
- D
High production can coexist with low biomass when organisms die rapidly. That doesn't establish that low biomass is more likely than high biomass in those circumstances.
- E
The local-versus-regional distinction is relevant, but the fourth theory studies regional speciation, not regional competition. This attaches the right geographic distinction to the wrong process.
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