LSAT 148 – Section 4 – Question 04

LSAT 148 - Section 4 - Question 04

December 2016

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT148 S4 Q04	+LR	Strengthen +Streng Causal Reasoning +CausR Eliminating Options +ElimOpt	A 3% 158 B 1% 155 C 1% 159 D 93% 163 E 1% 160	120 126 141	+Easiest	147.694 +SubsectionMedium

Ecologist: Before finding a mate, male starlings decorate their nests with fragments of aromatic plants rich in compounds known to kill parasitic insects. Since these parasites are potentially harmful to nestlings, some researchers have hypothesized that the function of these decorations is nestling protection. However, males cease to incorporate such greenery once egg laying starts, which suggests instead that the function of the decorations is to attract females.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis

The ecologist hypothesizes that the reason male starlings use aromatic plants in their nests is to attract females, contrary to previous hypotheses that the plants protected nestlings from parasites. This is based on the observation that these males only incorporate these aromatic plants before egg-laying begins, and stop adding them to nests when egg-laying begins.

Notable Assumptions

The ecologist assumes that there is not an alternate explanation for the male starlings only incorporating the aromatic plants before egg-laying.
The ecologist also assumes that aromatic plants incorporated before egg-laying couldn’t kill parasitic insects over an extended time period, and thus still protect nestlings.

Adult starlings are able to defend themselves against parasitic insects.

This is irrelevant, since the effect of parasitic insects on adults is not discussed in the argument. We only care about parasites’ potential harmful effect on nestlings and whether the aromatic plants function to counteract that harm.

Male starlings do not decorate their nests in areas with unusually small populations of parasitic insects.

This weakens by providing more evidence that these decorations do have to do with parasitic insects after all, if they are only used in nests in areas where parasitic insects are a threat.

Nestlings grow faster in nests that incorporate aromatic plants than in nests that do not.

This seems to weaken by suggesting an alternate explanation for the incorporation of aromatic plants in nests: to help nestlings grow faster. It’s still not clear whether it makes a difference when the decoration occurs, but this certainly doesn’t strengthen.

Male starlings tend to decorate their nests with a greater number of aromatic plants when a caged female is positioned adjacent to the nest.

This strengthens by providing direct evidence in support of the ecologist’s hypothesis: males increasing the use of aromatic plants when females are nearby is consistent with those plants functioning to attract females.

The compounds in the aromatic plants used by the male starlings to decorate their nests are harmless to nestlings.

This doesn’t affect the ecologist’s hypothesis, since the argument has nothing to do with whether the aromatic plants are harmful to nestlings.

LSAT 148 – Section 4 – Question 04

LSAT 148 - Section 4 - Question 04

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Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 148 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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