Logical reasoning PrepTest 122 · Section 2 · Question 9

Incorrect. While the stimulus does establish that food availability is related to extinction, there's no statement strong enough to support this answer stating that it's the "main factor" in extinction.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Valid

Question Type:
Must Be True

Stimulus Summary:
Large-animal species - Need a lot of food to survive
Climate change makes it so they can't find that much food, making them vulnerable to extinction
Small-animal species - Can maintain larger populations on less food

Answer Anticipation:
This stimulus features a few types of statements that tend to lead to correct answers. There are comparisons between large- and small-animals species, and a causal connection drawn between environmental degradation/climate change and both food and extinction.

This is one of those questions where it's unclear what direction, exactly, the correct answer is going to go, but with these elements outlined, we should be able to eliminate anything out of scope and then analyze the remaining answers to see which one is provable. Must Be True questions that feature arguments (as this one does) also frequently have answers that generalize from the argument here, so we should be on the lookout for that, as well.

Answer Explanation:
This answer is very weak ("at least in part") which is good in an answer choice generalizing from a few examples. And the stimulus does state that the inability to find enough food to survive, which can be "enormous" for large animals, helps make these animals vulnerable to extinction. That supports this answer choice, so it's correct.

Key Takeaway:
For "most supported" Must Be True questions, weaker answers are generally better because they're easier to support. This is especially true of answers that generalize from a subset of whatever is being discussed—as this argument does in talking only about large- and small-animal species.

Incorrect. This answer is too strong. While the large-animal species are "more" vulnerable than small-animal species to extinction when environmental conditions deteriorate, that doesn't mean that the latter can't go extinct before the former. It's possible that a given environment doesn't even have any large-animal species, and thus any small-animal species there that goes extinct would do so despite no large-animal species suffering the same fate.

Incorrect. The stimulus never discusses individual animals, just entire species as a group, so we can't draw this inference.

Incorrect. This answer is too strong. If an environment degrades completely, then small-animal species would likely be in as much trouble as the large-animal ones.