The coloration of insects can serve as camouflage, as in the

Right on ! which refers to "combination". Remember there is a preposition before "yellow and black"

c) or as a warning to predators, as in the case of insects bearing a combination of yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous.

Moreover "yellow and black" is plural. So verb has to plural "signal". But here the verb is singular - "signals". so which refers to "combination"

The parallelism here is - "serve as x or serve as y". So choice C is correct, and in this case "warning" is the correct choice for parallelism.

3 or as a warning to predators, as in the case of insects bearing a combination of yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous.

isnt "they" ambiguous here. it can refer to yellow n black or to predetors. obviously they cannot refer to yellow n black...but still ambiguous isnt it?

D changes the meaning.
"predator's warning" would mean that the insect is the predator. But, it's not so. The warning is for one who preys on the insects. So, the insect is a prey.
Moreover, here "which" incorrectly modifies "yellow and black", whereas it should modify combination.

I am not too sure about the ambiguity about "they". It may be ambiguous, but considering that all the options use some pronoun, we'll just have to ignore that ambiguity and validate the correctness based on other rules.

"C" has no error IMO. "they" could be ambiguous but we can ignore that because rest of the options also contain same ambiguity luckily.

Yeah agreed--none of the choices are better than 3. 1,2 and 5 should be rejected right away. Then you are locked down to 3 and 4, and 3 and 4 both have the same problem of ambiguity of "they". 4 is definitely a weird construction in the beginning. So 3 it is.

Agree; however, i differ from the statement that "they" is ambiguous in D.

4 or as a predator's warning, as in the case of insects that are colored yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous.

here "they" has only antecedent as "insects". "predator's" is possessive, so "they" can't refer to it.

I agree I missed the point of "they" referring to "predator's", but still "predator's warning" is just not right.

in C..what does 'which' refer to? it must be referring to either 'black' (preceding noun) or 'combination' (if we remove the prepositional phrase-of yellow and black),but both if them are incorrect..right? pls explain

'Which' does not refer to the preceding noun, namely black; This is an exception to the touch rule of the relative pronoun; by logic, it relates to the combination, smugly fitting in if you obscure the intermediaries for a while. For predators, yellow and black is a deadly combination that frightens them. ( according to the passage) . Therefore, I think it is reasonable to accept combination as the referent to ‘which’

C is correct. Subhashghosh has the correct explanation.

---I found a good parallism explanation ---


"as camouflage, as in the case" is parallel to "as a warning to predators, as in the case" -- which is the only reason why C is correct. In E , "to warn predators, as in the case" is not parallel to "as camouflage, as in the case"

The question is testing the knowledge of sentence modification and parallelism. There must be parallelism across "or" . serve as x or as Y. In between the part is descriptive and removable.
The coloration of insects can serve as camouflage, or as warning to predators. Here both Camouflage and warning are nouns. Verbing words work as Noun as well.
Ex- Dancing is a good exercise.

The coloration of insects can serve as camouflage, as in the case of green insects that spend their lives in or near foliage, or to warn predators, as in the case of insects colored in yellow and black, which often signals that it is poisonous.

a. or to warn predators, as in the case of insects colored in yellow and black, which often signals that it is poisonous.
(Insects needed to be in plural form parallel to green insects and it(Singular pronoun) does not correlate with its antecedent.)

b. or for warning predators, as in the case of insects that have yellow and black coloring, which often signals that it is poisonous.
(Pronoun issue repeats here.)

c. or as a warning to predators, as in the case of insects bearing a combination of yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous.
Correct choice with no major errors as in other options.

d. or as a predator's warning, as in the case of insects that are colored yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous.
(An insect cannot spend its life as a predator warning. Does not make sense.
Also colored error repeats here.)

e. or to warn predators, as in the case of yellow-and-black insects, which often signals that they are poisonous.
here which refers to insects but insects dont signal anything their color does. So incorrect due to meaning error.



I think this is absolutely OK as long as there is no ambiguity in meaning.

Hi Mechmeera,

I apology in advance if i still keep asking too much since I am not satisfied.

I still think that " their" refers to A while " they " refers to B faced pronoun error.

However, I remember a real GMAT question which was explained by an Manhantan expert :
To meet the rapidly rising market demand for fish and seafood, suppliers are growing fish twice as fast as their natural growth rate, cutting their feed allotment by nearly half and raising them on special diets

A) their natural growth rate, cutting their feed allotment
B) their natural growth rate, their feed allotment cut
C) growing them naturally, cutting their feed allotment
D) they grow naturally, cutting their feed allotment
E) they grow naturally, with their feed allotment cut

Question : one question.. are the pronoun they and thier are correctly refering to thier antecedent. i am confused beacause 'They', is close to 'suppliers' so, it may refer to supplier.
please clarify
Replied by Ron : this is a good point -- the correct answer to this problem, yet again, contains a pronoun that is technically ambiguous.

however, as we've seen again and again and again and again, not all ambiguous pronouns are incorrect!

so here's the simplest way of making the decision:

1) if you see an AMBIGUOUS PRONOUN that is REPLACED BY THE CORRECT NOUN in OTHER ANSWER CHOICES, then ELIMINATE the ambiguous pronoun and keep the specific noun.
for an example, see problem 68 in the blue verbal supplement, in which "them" is split against "these companies".

HOWEVER,
2) if you see an ambiguous pronoun that is NOT replaced by the correct noun in any of the other answer choices, then DON'T eliminate!
for an example, see problem 21 in the blue verbal supplement (in which the correct answer contains a technically ambiguous pronoun).
or see the problem in this thread!

So I think this problem faced the same issue. Before we check for pronoun ( with no options with the correct ), we check for other errors first. So "serve as or as " is correct idiom then A, B, E out. D changes meaning that is why C is correct. Kind of the best of the worst options . How do you think abou that?

Littlegirl wrote:



Why not?

You will appreciate that in the case of fixing pronouns, it is the logic that is the ultimate decider. Especially when there two entities that are distinctly different, each entity will be referred by its own appropriate pronoun. For example:

We like the Latin American soccer players because of their rhythmic ballet–like movements in the play, while we relish European players, as they excel in power-play. (Or even) --- we relish Europeans because of their power play) --same pronoun referring to two different referents. Anything wrong in these things?

Please note that all the three eligible choices use the same pronouns ‘their and they'. If you have to reject, you have to reject all the three of them. Then this question itself becomes suspect.

IMO C
1 or to warn predators, as in the case of insects colored in yellow and black, which often signals that it is poisonous. Pronoun error
2 or for warning predators, as in the case of insects that have yellow and black coloring, which often signals that it is poisonous. same as above
3 or as a warning to predators, as in the case of insects bearing a combination of yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous. correct answer
4 or as a predator's warning, as in the case of insects that are colored yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous. Change in meaning
5 or to warn predators, as in the case of yellow-and-black insects, which often signals that they are poisonous. which modifies insects

The coloration of insects can serve as camouflage, as in the case of green insects that spend their lives in or near foliage, or to warn predators, as in the case of insects colored in yellow and black, which often signals that it is poisonous.


1 or to warn predators, as in the case of insects colored in yellow and black, which often signals that it is poisonous.
2 or for warning predators, as in the case of insects that have yellow and black coloring, which often signals that it is poisonous.
3 or as a warning to predators, as in the case of insects bearing a combination of yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous. This looks correct but I rejected this because of "they" which is ambiguous
4 or as a predator's warning, as in the case of insects that are colored yellow and black, which often signals that they are poisonous. I marked C as it is grammatically correct but as per discussion, it does changes meaning
5 or to warn predators, as in the case of yellow-and-black insects, which often signals that they are poisonous.