Logical Reasoning

PT126 · S4 · Q18 While it is true that bees’

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While it is true that bees’ vision is well suited to the task of identifying flowers by their colors, it is probable that flowers developed in response to the type of vision that bees have, rather than bees’ vision developing in response to flower color.

Statement

It's more likely that flowers developed colors in response to the type of vision that bees have, rather than that bees evolved their vision in response to the type of colors that flowers have.

Evaluate

This wasn't an argument, as the question stem indicated by telling us to support the statement.

It's basically a Natural Selection riddle of the chicken and the egg. We know that bees have vision suited for flower color and flowers have colors that attract bees vision, but which came first?

Goal

We need an answer that makes it seem more likely that bees had their vision first, and then flowers developed their colors in order to take advantage

18.

Which one of the following, if true, most strongly supports the statement above?

  1. Correct

    Many insects that have vision

    Why this is right

    This answer plays off a lot of real world common sense about how natural selection works. Adaptations happen because they give a species a survival advantage. In the storyline where flowers had their color first, and bees adapted their vision to get better at seeing flowers, the adaptation would have provided bees with the survival advantage of finding the flowers they wanted to pollinate. (A) weakens that alternative storyline, because other insects that do have that adaptation (very similar to bees vision), don't get any survival advantage out of seeing colors (don't depend on perceiving an object's color). If you think about this as Curious Fact / Explanation: Why does bee vision work so well with flower color? The survival advantage of perceiving color caused them to evolve this type of vision. This answer is a No Cause, Effect weakener to that storyline. Organisms that wouldn't get a survival advantage out of perceiving color still evolved this type of vision. In short, we're trying to figure out which came 1st, which same 2nd: bee vision or flower color? This answer doesn't give any reason to suggest that flower color came 2nd. But it gives a reason to think that bees didn't come 2nd (it appears that this vision they have was not an adaption for the sake of perceiving colors, since many other organisms with the same vision get no survival advantage out of perceiving colors)

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    59% picked this

  2. Some flowers rely on insects

    Too Weak

    Answers with "some, can, might, sometimes, not all" are so weak (they only provide at least one data point) that they are almost always wrong on Strengthen / Weaken / Evaluate. The fact that there's at least one flower that relies on insects other than bees doesn't do much to solve the evolutionary mystery of which came first: bee vision or flower color.

    4% picked this

  3. The number of different species

    Irrelevant Distinction

    We would ask ourselves, does number of species have a common sense connection to which came earlier? Not really. There might be fewer species of cockroach than canine, but cockroaches arrived on the scene hundreds of millions of years prior. We might be thinking, "Because flowers are adapting colors in order to match bee vision, there are more and more species of flower". But having an adaption doesn't mean you're a new species. I don't think they consider too different "strains" of a species to be separate species until they can no longer interbreed. A carnation with a mutation that makes its petals a more vibrant pink is not a new species. It's still a carnation. If this vibrant pink mutation is successful enough, those pink petals may come to be so common in the gene pool of carnations that it just becomes a new trait of the species, but not a new species.

    16% picked this

  4. Many nonflowering plants rely on

    Too Weak

    This is similar to (B). Bees and flowers are not in an exclusive relationship. Flowers are relying on other insects. Non-flowers are relying on bees. It's a very swinging scene. But these lurid details of insect/plant polygamy don't help us assess which came first: bee vision or flower color.

    11% picked this

  5. Present-day bees rely exclusively on

    No Impact

    We know that bees and flowers have an interdependent relationship. Bees rely on flowers for pollen. Flowers rely on bees to pollinate other flowers. But stating this doesn't help us figure out which part of this symbiosis came first.

    9% picked this

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