LR Question 11 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Peter: Because the leaves of mildly drought-stressed…
QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen
CONCLUSION: Peter’s conclusion is that we shouldn’t water plants too much.
REASONING: Plants will develop tougher leaves if they have too little water. Insects prefer these leaves to leaves that have lots and lots of water.
ANALYSIS: Peter is arguing for giving plants only a small amount of water. This could be harmful. His only evidence is that drought-stressed plants get eaten less. Drought-stressed sounds bad.
The correct answer tells us that being drought stressed isn’t as bad as being eaten.
___________
- This doesn’t matter. Obviously different crops will react differently. The question is: how will an individual species react to changes in water levels?
- This doesn’t tell us if abundant watering is a good or a bad idea.
- CORRECT. Otherwise, we might be hurting the plants through lack of water even as we helped them avoid getting eaten by insects.
- This doesn’t affect what farmers should try to do when they can control water levels.
- This comparison is between two different types of bugs. It’s irrelevant. We want to know whether the same insect species is more or less likely to feed when water is scarce.
More Resources for Strengthen Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Strengthen questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers strengthen questions.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how C is correct. Insect damage and mild drought stress are both bad for the plant. Who cares which is worse, being that both of these things resuly with me needing to water the plant?
Suppose insects are only a 1% threat to plants, but insufficient water is a massive threat. In that case it would be foolish to deprive plants of water merely to guard against theoretical risk from insects.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.