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Let's get rid of the four answers we can match up with the passage.
The explanation for the dolphin die-off given by the research team most strongly supports which one of the following?
The biological mechanism by which
The researchers are only talking about what killed these dolphins. We don't have a way to support the idea that brevetoxin affects dolphins differently from how it affects other marine animals. We don't hear about other marine animals (other than the fish, who accumulate brevetoxin in their tissue). This answer is making it seem like brevetoxin has a "unique" physical interaction with dolphins, but we have not way of supporting that dolphins are special in terms of the biological mechanism by which brevetoxin affects them. This feels like a trap answer that's designed to get students thinking, "If we only talked about dolphins getting poisoned by brevetoxin, I guess other marine animals weren't getting poisoned (illegal inference), which means brevetoxin interacts with their biological mechanisms differently."
5% picked this
When P. brevis blooms in
The passage never gives any rationale for situations in which we'd expect brevetoxin to be more or less toxic than average. This answer wants students to think, "Since P. brevis normally isn't in this habitat, and since its presence here led to the poisoning a lot of dolphins, it must be more toxic when it shows up here (bad inference)." Brevetoxin might be just as toxic in its usual neighborhood. If we say, "tornadoes usually don't occur in Alabama, but one did in October 1987 and did a lot of damage", that doesn't mean that "tornadoes tend to do more damage when they occur in areas where they usually don't exist".
7% picked this
Opportunistic bacterial infection is usually
The research team thinks that in this instance, opportunistic bacterial infection was associated with brevetoxin poisoning. But we have no support for generalizing that into what is usually the case.
12% picked this
The dolphins’ emaciated state was
The research team thought the emaciated appearance indicated that they were metabolizing their blubber and releasing stores of PCBs. But they think brevetoxin poisoning caused all this. Brevetoxin poisoning caused the dolphins to metabolize their blubber. Metabolizing your fat away leaves you in an emaciated state. The author is the one who thinks that the dolphins' issues primarily stem from PCB poisoning. The researchers only consider PCB the cherry on top. They think brevetoxin is the root cause.
12% picked this
When a dolphin metabolizes its
Why this is right
The final two sentences of the 3rd paragraph support this. The researcher interpreted the emaciated appearance of the dolphins to mean that they were metabolizing their blubber, thereby ... releasing stores of previously accumulated synthetic pollutants, such as PCBs, which further exacerbated their condition. The combined impact made the dolphins vulnerable to opportunistic bacterial infection, the ultimate cause of death. Since releasing the PCB's exacerbated the downward health spiral of the dolphins, we can say it made their situation worse. This is doing a Flip the Causal Difference-Maker, by saying, "So you mean ... their situation was better when the PCB's weren't released?"
Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
64% picked this
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