PrepTest 152, Section 4, Question 19
European wood ants incorporate large quantities of solidified(42 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(15 more words not shown)
- Awhether conifer resin(10 more words not shown)
- Bwhether the nests(18 more words not shown)
- Cwhether any ant(12 more words not shown)
- Dwhether the use(11 more words not shown)
- Ewhether the disinfectant(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe the resin helps hold the nest together.
When we first hear that ants collect this material, insulation or construction could be a reason. We then learn that resin kills bacteria that can cause disease in the ants. That gives it another useful property, but a benefit of using something isn't automatically the reason its use developed.
What we’re looking for
What if the resin was the best sticky material available for building the nest, with disease protection as an additional benefit? That would make the history different from the one the author proposes. For the evaluation question, I'd want to investigate another purpose for incorporating resin into the nest.
Working the answers
- A
The disinfectant effect needn't last for a very long time to provide a disease-protection benefit. The ants might replace material, or the relevant nest might not need that extremely long duration. A could tell us more about resin's usefulness, but it doesn't target the central question of why this use came about as directly as D does.
- B
Seasonal changes in the amount of resin don't tell us why the ants use it. Without information connecting the seasons to disease or some other need, either a constant or a varying amount could fit several explanations. The mere presence of variation doesn't choose among them.
- C
Other ant species might use resin for the same reason or a different one. Learning that they use it wouldn't by itself establish why European wood ants began doing so. We need a connection to the proposed explanation for this species.
- DCorrect
Structural benefits would give us the alternative purpose we were looking for. If resin helps keep the nest together, its use might have developed for construction rather than disease protection. That would weaken the inference from disinfectant properties to the proposed origin of the behavior.
If it provides no structural benefit, that particular competing explanation loses support. Neither answer would settle the entire history, and other purposes could remain possible. But the answer would bear directly on an alternative to the author's account, making this a useful question to investigate.
- E
Why conifer trees developed disinfectant resin is different from why ants began putting it in nests. The resin could protect the trees from disease while the ants use it for construction, insulation, disease protection, or more than one benefit. E leaves the ants' reason unresolved.
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