Q20 - For pollinating certain crops such as cranberries

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (most supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Read for Conditional, Causal, Quantitative, or Comparative
COMPARISON: B's are far more efficient than H's when it comes to pollinating cranberries (and others).
CAUSAL DISTINCTION: B's focus on fewer species in a smaller area, while H's focus on more species over a broader area.

Answer Anticipation:
Since there was a difference in pollinating efficiency between H's and B's, and they told us what the causal difference maker was, we should synthesize the info by saying "visiting fewer species over a smaller area can make something a more efficient pollinator of certain crops".

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Extreme: "ANY" of those species? We only know that this connection exists for CERTAIN crops.

(B) Sure! Safely worded, and it restates are causal link between "pollinating efficiency" and "how many / how few species as well has how limited / how broad an area"

(C) Speculative. It seems pretty reasonable to say this, but nothing in the passage directly supports that idea. H's happen to both fly over a broader area and visit more species, but there's no causal connector language between those two traits.

(D) Extreme: "TYPICALLY"? Do we know where cranberries are found 51% or more of the time?

(E) Extreme: The more X, the more Y. We can't graph this connection, and say for every extra unit of of likelihood, we get another unit of efficiency. Also, this is drifting beyond honeybees and bumblebees to any "given bee species". And it's drifting from talking about the number of species visited and area covered to talking about "the likelihood that one or more plants in a crop is visited".

Takeaway/Pattern: LSAT probably anticipated most people would go for (E). It's fairly straightforward with the smallish stimulus that we need to connect "pollinating efficiency" to the contrast in the 2nd sentence. (B) and (E) both do so, but since it's Inference, we're in much safer territory signing off on weak language. Saying "X has an effect on Y" is a lot easier to support than saying "The more X, the more Y".

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