Until recently, many biologists believed that invertebrate "schools" were actually transient assemblages, brought together by wind, currents, waves, or common food sources. █████████ ██████████ ███ ████████ ██████ ██ █████████ ██ ██████████████████ ██████ █████ █████ ███████ ███ ██████ ██████ ███ ████ ███ ████ ████ ███
Biologists' old perspective ·"Schools" of invertebrates are are not really schools
Example: groups of jelly fish are not cohesive social units that are evenly spaced from each other and face the same way. (Seems like we get a definition of "schools" here.)
Support for new perspective ·Groups of invertebrates can position themselves in a way that meets the definition of "school"
The way each member swims is consistent relative to other members, and they don't swim directly above or below a neighbor. (This sounds similar to the "evenly spaced" requirement.)
Benefits of schooling ·Reduces chance of being eaten
School is harder to find, can scare away predators, and an individual member is more likely to get away, since there are a lot of other school members to eat.
These are more active defenses, whereas the last paragraph described passive benefits. Schools have different approaches based on the size of predators and whether they are attacking.
Too many members may hurt ability to get food and mates. If school's too big, some members will join another school.
Passage Style
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Single position
7.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ █████ ████ ███████ █████████ ███ ██████████ █████ █████████ █████████ ██ ███ █████ ████████ ██ ███ █████ ██████████
Question Type
WSE
We want to undermine the assumption that schooling “must bring important benefits.” Let’s look for an answer that helps suggest schooling does not bring important benefits to invertebrates.
This merely establishes that some groups of invertebrates can’t engage in one of the potential benefits of schooling. But this doesn’t suggest that those groups can’t benefit from other aspects of schooling (such as the passive advantages described in P3).
This merely establishes that some predators aren’t affected by the issue of distinguishing a school from individual members. But there are still many other benefits to schooling; this doesn’t help show that schooling doesn’t bring important benefits to invertebrates.
c
Research demonstrates that ███ ████ ██ ████████████ ██████████ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ████████ ███ ██████ ███ ███████ ██ █████████
This undermines the assumption by providing evidence that invertebrates that don’t form schools are more likely to survive. This is evidence that schooling doesn’t actually bring invertebrates important survival benefits.
This doesn’t weaken, because the author already acknowledges the potential for schools to be more visible to predators. The benefit, however, is that schools might discourage predation by appearing to be a large animal, or individual members are more likely to escape from a predator. Also, this relates to just one specific potential benefit of schooling; there are still many other benefits that might help an invertebrate survive.
We have no reason to think that a decrease in the optimal size suggests that schooling doesn’t have important benefits. A smaller school is still a school and presumably grants benefits to its members.
Difficulty
78% of people who answer get this correct
This is a moderately difficult question.
It is significantly harder than the average question in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%129
145
75%161
Analysis
WSE
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Science
Single position
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
7%
161
b
4%
160
c
78%
167
d
10%
161
e
1%
150
Question history
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