PrepTest 127, Section 3, Question 7
Conservation officers justified their decision to remove a(55 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(10 more words not shown)
- APlover are ground-nesting(8 more words not shown)
- BWild cat and(6 more words not shown)
- CCoyotes are not(13 more words not shown)
- DThe wild cat(12 more words not shown)
- EThe coyotes preyed(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The officers removed the coyotes to protect the plover. Yet afterward the plover population fell dramatically and then disappeared from the island. Something else must help explain why removing a threat didn't save them.
The coyotes ate wild cats as well as plover. What if the cats also ate plover? Then removing the coyotes could allow more cats to survive, leaving the plover exposed to more hunting by cats. Getting rid of one predator could indirectly make another predator a much bigger problem.
What we’re looking for
Other possibilities exist. A disease, for example, could reduce the plover population even after the coyotes were removed. The question asks us to explain the observed outcome, and the connection involving wild cats is the explanation I would look for first. If coyotes mostly ate cats and cats ate many plover, keeping the coyotes might have provided the birds with protection that the officers overlooked.
Working the answers
- A
This explains why coyotes could threaten plover while the coyotes were present. But the puzzling decline followed their removal. Making the old threat more serious doesn't explain why removing it failed to protect the birds.
- B
Saying that the cat and plover populations tend to fluctuate together gives us no account of what the coyotes' removal changed. It doesn't say the cats prey on plover or that more cats survived after the removal. We can't rewrite a vague connection between their populations into the specific explanation we need.
- C
This tells us which animals are susceptible to certain diseases. It does not tell us that a disease struck the island or that removing coyotes made a disease more likely to spread among plover. A possible disease explanation needs those missing facts, not merely a difference in susceptibility.
- D
When was the cat population larger, and what happened when the coyotes were removed? A comparison with an unspecified earlier time doesn't answer those questions. It doesn't identify a post-removal increase in a threat to plover or even say that cats eat them.
- ECorrect
Coyotes mainly ate wild cats, and the cats ate plover. That supplies the food-chain connection we predicted. Removing the coyotes could release the cats from some predation, allowing them to kill more plover.
The coyotes could eat some plover themselves while still doing the plover population more good by limiting their other predator. That is why removing the coyotes could backfire. E doesn't have to establish that coyotes were the cats' only predator; the newly identified relationship is enough to make the outcome understandable.
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