Monarch butterflies must contend with

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact6% picked this

   monarch butterflies are unable to detect which areas are free

   This doesn't provide an Alternate Explanation for why there's a correlation between migrating and not-being-infected with parasites. This also doesn't say anything that hurts the plausibility that migration helps the monarchs to avoid these parasites.

   6%
2. B

   Unclear Impact1% picked this

   long migrations are no better protection from parasites than are

   Does this hurt the plausibility of the idea that migrations allow monarchs to avoid these parasites? Not really. Do the migrations need to be of a certain length in order to help protect the butterflies? It's not clear what length that would be or why that would make a difference in terms of parasite-protection. There might be one month (let's say January) when the parasites thrive. If a butterfly has migrated away during January, it will be protected from the parasites, whether that butterfly is gone for a short 3 month migration or for a long 6 month migration.

   1%
3. C

   No Impact10% picked this

   populations of monarch butterflies that have not migrated are much larger

   The relative size of these populations doesn't matter. If we find out that 95% of left handed people get a disease X, while less than 15% of right handed people get disease X, we have good reason to suspect that disease X is connected to the genes that result in left-handedness. It doesn't make any difference that there are 8x as many right handed people in the world.

   10%
4. D

   Correct83% picked this

   monarch butterflies infected with parasites are typically unable

   Why this is right

   This provides the reverse cause Alternate Explanation we anticipated. It's not that migrating allows monarchs to avoid these parasites. It's that avoiding these parasites allows monarchs to migrate. We see arguments like, "People who attend exercise classes tend to be in better health than those who don't. Thus, exercise classes help improve your health", and LSAT wants us to consider the alternate, reverse cause interpretation of that correlation: maybe being healthy allows someone to attend an exercise class.

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

   83%
5. E

   No Impact1% picked this

   populations of monarch butterflies tend not to migrate if they have

   Why populations do or don't tend to migrate doesn't matter to us, unless the basis for that decision relates to whether or not a butterfly population would have significant exposure to the parasites. But there's no common sense connection between whether or not a population has a stable food source and whether or no they're exposed to this parasite.

   1%