Temple's proposed causal mechanism ·CM seeds in fruit adapted to dodo
Dodos ate CM fruits. Seeds in fruit became thick to withstand passing through dodos' stomachs. But seeds were so thick they couldn't germinate without passing through dodos' stomachs. When dodos went extinct, seeds couldn't germinate.
Other hypotheses ·CM decline could be due to disease or introduction of non-native animals
Passage Style
Critique or debate
Phenomenon-hypothesis
25.
The passage indicates which one ██ ███ █████████ █████ ███ ████████ ██ ████████ █████ ███ ██████
Question Type
Stated
This is a Stated question about the abrasion of Calvaria major pit walls. The author discusses the abrasion of Calvaria major pit walls throughout the passage, so we can’t preprahase a specific answer, but remember that the correct answer will be supported by the passage.
This is supported in P4. We see that, while just a minority of the unabraded seeds germinated, some of these unabraded seeds did germinate, showing that thinning through abrasion is not necessary for germination.
Anti-supported. Actually, in P3, we see that many of the pits fed to turkeys were destroyed, so we can’t say that the seeds were always released undamaged.
Unsupported. We know that the author thinks that Temple was probably mistaken about his overall hypothesis, but we don’t know if Temple was mistaken about the claim in (C) specifically. Temple may have been right about the abrasion caused by dodos, even if his overall hypothesis was wrong. We just don’t have the information to claim that Temple was mistaken in this belief specifically.
Unsupported. The passage doesn’t address the frequency with which this abrasion occurred in past centuries, and we don’t have enough information to make a general comparison between what happened in past centuries and what happens today. We might be able to infer what Temple thinks about this, but remember that the author disagrees with Temple. Either way, (D) is not stated in the passage.
Unsupported. The passage doesn’t say that something else has been abrading pit walls since the dodo went extinct, so we can’t say that this is a fact that Temple overlooked. The author does indicate that Temple’s overall hypothesis (that the extinction of the dodo caused the population decline of the trees) is probably incorrect, but the passage never says that Temple was wrong specifically for the reason stated in (E).
Difficulty
58% of people who answer get this correct
This is a very difficult question.
It is similar in difficulty to other questions in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%155
162
75%170
Analysis
Stated
Critique or debate
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Science
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
58%
167
b
4%
158
c
7%
157
d
8%
160
e
22%
162
Question history
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