Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Hard

PT126 S4 Q18 Explanation

While it is true that bees’

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

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Stimulus

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 developing in response to flower color.

What this question is testing

Strengthen

Your task

Find the choice that makes the argument's conclusion more likely to be true.

Common trap

Answers that are consistent with the argument but add no real support, or that strengthen a claim the argument doesn't make.

Winning move

Locate the gap between evidence and conclusion, then pick the choice that closes it.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
18.

Which one of the following, if true, most strongly supports the

Answer choices

  1. Correct59% picked this

    Many insects that have vision very similar to that of bees do not depend on

    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.

  2. Too Weak4% picked this

    Some flowers rely on insects other

    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.

  3. Irrelevant Distinction16% picked this

    The number of different species of flowers is greater than the number of different

    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.

  4. Too Weak11% picked this

    Many nonflowering plants rely on

    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.

  5. No Impact9% picked this

    Present-day bees rely exclusively on flowers for

    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.

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