A student notes question asking for a conclusion and its strongest support tests whether you can meet both parts of a goal. Read the goal first, and name both jobs the sentence must do. Then find what the researchers think the results mean, and ask which test best supports that conclusion. For a claim about cause, look for a test that changes the suspected cause and compares results when everything else stays the same. True facts can still miss the goal.
Hints
- Hint 1
Read the final bullet for the conclusion. What role do stop signals play, and how do they do it?
- Hint 2
In the trials with control colonies, look for the difference between the setups. How does comparing their results test whether stop signals themselves influence foraging?
Step-by-step
Match the conclusion to its strongest support
Step 1Name both jobs
Start with summarize the study’s main conclusion and emphasize the strongest evidence that stop signals themselves influence colony foraging. What must the answer do? It needs the researchers’ conclusion and evidence that the signals cause a change in foraging, so a true result alone won’t cover the whole goal.
- Step 2
Pin down how the signals work
What conclusion does the last bullet give? Stop signals help bees avoid risky food by suppressing waggle dancing rather than merely accompanying bees’ response to danger. The signals change foraging by cutting down the dances. The wording directly warning recruits changes how the signals work, while predator attacks themselves suppress waggle dances makes the attacks, rather than the signals, the cause. Neither gives the stated conclusion.
- Step 3
Separate cause from coincidence
After the attacks, stop signals rose and dancing decreased. What else could have caused those changes? Danger could have affected both, but the separate trials had no predator present and used controls with the same setup without the vibrations. Comparing those setups tests the effect of adding signals, because danger is absent and the setup is otherwise the same. The choice relying on after simulated predator attacks doesn’t separate those possible causes.
- Step 4
Use the controlled result
What happened when artificial signals were added? They shortened waggle dances and reduced the number of recruits visiting the advertised feeder compared with the controls. That shows both a change in dancing and a change in where bees went. The sentence with in predator-free trials ties the conclusion to a controlled drop in dancing and recruitment. Choice B.