Passage Structure:

Hypothesis.

A (sufficient): play

B (necessary): Females and juveniles participate

Conclusion: /A.

Reasoning: If A (play), than we would expect B (female and juv participation.

/B (only males), so /A (not play aka mating) must be true.

The thing that actually happens must represent a negated sufficient condition.

AC C:

If A (on schedule), then we would expect B (complete). But /B (not complete), so /A (not on schedule)

Question stem is key here: We're talking about the subset of Eiders that eggs in other Eider's nests. Those birds (probably) do so to be able to LOCATE their nests. So for these birds, maximum protection is balanced with the ability to be able to find the nest.

B is the only answer that really addresses that priority.

A is saying that those birds have recently started building their own nests - wouldn't impact the location they choose, also takes us out of the subset of birds we're specifically asked about

C again isn't addressing the question of why they pick a certain location. If you assumed that the birds who lay eggs in established nests only do so in concealed areas than I can see why this would be confusing

D and E also don't address anything relevant. They just add new info

Wondering how future me would handle this situation on an actual test. I think if you just dumb all the answer choices down, B stands out much more. We're basically trying to justify removing bats from buildings...

A: Bats give other bats rabies - who cares?

B: Rabid bats don't move around much once they've settled somewhere and are super aggressive - that would scare me enough to want to remove bats from the building

C: Most rabid animals - already don't care, only talking about bats. This also just restates the premise. If it was saying something about animals that rarely bite people are more likely to get rabies that'd be different

D: This strengthens the argument

E: Has nothing to do with the argument

Understanding the first sentence is the key, even if you don't fully understand what AC C is saying. The first sentence draws a distinction - SO MANY oysters died that the NATIVE population almost went extinct - natives are just a subset, and they're the ones who are endangered. I didn't catch this at first, but if I did I'd be on the lookout for an answer choice that talked about another type of oyster that negatively impacts natives.

Hopefully this helps folks who (like myself) spent a ton of time on this question during the test and couldn't even form a good guess based off the ACs

#feedback would be great to see what practice test + question these lesson examples are pulled from.

Interested! Can we start a discord or groupme?