Self-study
While it is true that bees' vision is well suited to the task of identifying flowers by their colors, it is probable that flowers developed in response to the type of vision that bees have, rather than bees' vision developing in response to flower color.
Summarize Argument
Flowers’ colors adapted to bees, not the other way around.
Notable Assumptions
This isn’t a real argument—the author doesn’t provide evidence for their assertion. The right answer choice will strengthen the assertion by giving us evidence to believe the author is right. In other words, the right answer choice will provide us with a premise.
18.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ ████ ████████ ████████ ███ █████████ ██████
a
Many insects that ████ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ ██████████ ██ ████████ ██████
Since insects with vision similar to bees do not need to perceive color, there is no reason that bees must have developed their vision to perceive color. In other words, (A) says that perceiving color is likely not necessary for bees’ vision, strengthening the author’s claim.
Plausibility
Plausibility
Presenting evidence that corroborates (in Strengthen) or conflicts (in Weaken) with the author's hypothesized explanation or the predictions that follow from that explanation.
b
Some flowers rely ██ ███████ █████ ████ █████
This does not affect the argument. The word “some” is too ambiguous to tell us anything meaningful this situation—it could mean that one flower relies on an insect other than bees, which doesn’t do anything for our argument.
c
The number of █████████ ███████ ██ ███████ ██ ███████ ████ ███ ██████ ██ █████████ ███████ ██ █████
This does not affect the argument, and for it to have an impact, we would be required to make too many assumptions. The number of species of flowers and bees doesn’t tell us about how likely either orgnanism was to evolve in response to the other.
d
Many nonflowering plants ████ ██ █████
This does not affect the argument, and for it to have an impact, we would be required to make too many assumptions. Some nonflowering plants may rely on bees, but that doesn’t tell us about how they (or any other kind of flower) may have evolved in response to bees’ vision.
e
Present-day bees rely ███████████ ██ ███████ ███ █████ █████
This does not affect the argument. The fact that bees rely solely on flowers for food does not tell us whether their vision evolved in response to flower color. Maybe they depend on flowers for food, and their vision is adapted to be well-suited to avoiding predators.