Question 154·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Craft and Structure

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Text 1

The resource concentration hypothesis predicts that specialist herbivores cause more damage where their host plants form dense, uninterrupted patches. One explanation is that these herbivores rely on host odors and visual patterns to locate food; vegetation of other species interspersed among hosts can mask those signals, reducing the probability that an herbivore entering an area will reach a host. According to this explanation, plant diversity protects hosts chiefly before an herbivore reaches its first host, not by affecting the herbivore's subsequent feeding or movement.

Text 2

To test how plant diversity affects specialist moth larvae, botanist Adaeze Nwosu and colleagues created equal-sized plots containing identical arrangements of tomato plants. In half the plots, the researchers planted basil between the tomato plants; in the others, they left the spaces between tomato plants bare. They then placed equal numbers of larvae directly on a central tomato plant in each plot, eliminating differences in the larvae's initial ability to locate a host. Although larvae spent similar amounts of time feeding on each tomato plant they reached, tomato plants in the basil plots sustained less total damage. Video recordings showed that larvae leaving the central plant reached another tomato less often in the basil plots than in the plots with bare spaces.

Based on the texts, which choice best describes how the findings in Text 2 relate to the hypothesis and explanation presented in Text 1?

For cross-text questions, separate each text's broad claim from its proposed explanation. Then identify what the second text's experimental design controls and what its observations actually establish. An experiment may support a general prediction while revising or expanding the mechanism offered for that prediction.

Hints

Hint 1
Distinguish two levels of the claim
Identify both the general outcome predicted in Text 1 and the specific mechanism offered to explain that outcome.
Hint 2
Consider what the placement of the larvae controls
Ask which stage of the process the researchers bypassed by putting larvae directly on tomato plants.
Hint 3
Focus on the video evidence
Determine whether basil affected feeding on a reached host, movement to another host, or both.

Step-by-step

Step 1
Separate the prediction from the explanation
Text 1 makes a broad prediction that interspersing nonhost plants will reduce damage to host plants. It then offers a narrower explanation: nonhost plants make the first host harder to locate.
Step 2
Use the experimental design
In Text 2, the researchers placed larvae directly on central tomato plants. This design bypassed the initial host-location stage emphasized in Text 1.
Step 3
Interpret the observations
Basil did not change how long larvae fed on tomatoes they reached. Instead, it reduced the likelihood that larvae leaving one tomato would reach another, revealing an effect on movement between hosts.
Step 4
Identify the relationship
The reduced damage agrees with the hypothesis's general prediction, but the recorded movement shows that its proposed mechanism is incomplete. Therefore, the correct answer is D: They support the hypothesis's broader prediction but suggest that nonhost plants can protect hosts by impeding movement between hosts, not only by hindering initial host location.

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SAT Reading: Craft and StructureAdvancedCoreText 1 and Text 2: how would one author respond?

Question 154·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Craft and Structure

Text 1

Text 2

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