jy295 wrote:
I don't understand how A can be correct, besides using process of elimination. The passage tells us that wasps lay eggs directly into the host egg in exactly the right amount. "A" says that we can figure out the smallest host egg a wasp can theoretically parasitize based on their egg-laying behavior. However, we know that their egg-laying behavior is dependent on the size of the host egg. Therefore wouldn't their egg-laying behavior change for each size of host egg? If that's the case, how could someone use their egg-laying behavior, which is constantly changing, to figure out anything?
The egg laying behaviour has a pattern.
For a small egg (say 3 cm inside radius assuming spherical egg), the wasp lays few eggs, say 2.
For a larger egg (say 5 cm inside radius assuming spherical egg), the wasp would lay more eggs, say 5.
For an even larger egg (say 8 cm inside radius assuming spherical egg), the wasp would lay even more eggs, say 10.
and so on...
Wasps follow this pattern. Extrapolating it, we can theoretically find the size of the smallest egg that a wasp could parasitise.
jy295 wrote:
How the size can be determined from behavior?! in the passage we see they just know( based on instinct or experience, we don't know) but I cannot find correlation between choice A and passage
could you explain it, please?
The argument tells us - "Parasitic wasps lay their eggs directly into the eggs of various host insects in exactly the right numbers for any suitable size of host egg"
So if the host egg is large in size, the wasp lays more eggs in it, but if it is smaller in size, the wasp lays fewer eggs inside it.
By observing their behaviour (how many eggs in which size host egg), we can extrapolate to find the size in which the wasp will, theoretically, lay only 1 egg. So any smaller than that and the wasp would lay no egg in it.