Question:
Parasitic wasps lay their eggs directly into the eggs of various host insects in exactly the right numbers forany suitable size of host egg. If they laid too many eggs in a host egg, the developing wasp larvae would compete with each other to the death for nutrients and space. If too few eggs were laid, portions of the host egg would decay, killing the wasp larvae.
Which of the following conclusions can properly be drawn from the information above?
(A) The size of the smallest host egg that a wasp could theoretically parasitize can be determined from the
wasp’s egg-laying behavior.
(B) Host insects lack any effective defenses against the form of predation practiced by parasitic wasps.
(C) Parasitic wasps learn from experience how many eggs to lay into the eggs of different host species.
(D) Failure to lay enough eggs would lead to the death of the developing wasp larvae more quickly than
would laying too many eggs.
(E) Parasitic wasps use visual clues to calculate the size of a host egg.
Solution:
A:The answer is A
B: New information, from the passage there is no mention of anything to do with defenses
C: Could be true, but we don’t know for sure whether they learn from experience or they just know how to do it (do bees learn to sting from experience)
D: This is half true and half false, which makes it wrong
E: Again no mention of this anywhere in the stimulant so it is wrong
Leaving us with only A. because the stimulant says that wasps lay their eggs in exactly the right numbers, for us to know what this number is we would have to find out from the wasps behaviors
(46)
(28)
