Unlike the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants, situated undergr

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended core meaning of this sentence is that raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs to form "curtains" of ants that hang from logs or boulders, and in doing so, they are unlike leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are situated underground or in pieces of wood.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Comparisons + Awkwardness/Redundancy

• A comparison must always be made between similar elements.

A: This answer choice incorrectly compares "the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants" to "raider ants"; please remember, a comparison must always be made between similar elements.

B: This answer choice incorrectly compares "the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants" to "raider ants"; please remember, a comparison must always be made between similar elements. Further, the sentence formed by Option B uses the needlessly wordy phrase "which are situated underground or in pieces of wood", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

C: Correct. This answer choice correctly compares "leaf cutters and most other ants" with "raider ants". Further, Option C uses the phrase "whose nests are situated underground or in pieces of wood"; the use of this phrase to modify "leaf cutters and most other ants" conveys the intended meaning - that raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs to form "curtains" of ants that hang from logs or boulders, and in doing so, they are unlike leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are situated underground or in pieces of wood. Additionally, Option C is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.

D: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "in having nests situated underground or in pieces of wood"; the construction of this phrase leads to an incoherent meaning; the intended meaning is that raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs to form "curtains" of ants that hang from logs or boulders, and in doing so, they are unlike leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are situated underground or in pieces of wood.

E: This answer choice incorrectly compares "those (nests) of leaf cutters and most other ants" to "raider ants"; please remember, a comparison must always be made between similar elements.

Hence, C is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Template of like, unlike, in contrast with, in contrast to etc is

"Unlike Noun1, Noun2."


Here Noun1 is leaf cutters and most other ants
Noun2 is Raider Ants.

Hi experts,
I just feel "in having nest" in D is strange, but I have no idea about what's wrong with "in having nest",
I went back to OE

it confused me a lot
any expert can help?

thank a lot
have a nice day

>_~

experts,
HELP PLEASE...

thanks a lot
have a nice day
>_~

Consider the following sentence:
In having nests, raider ants make a portable....

In the above structure, "in having nests" refers to the raider ants. This is what the OE indicates.

thanks so much sayantan2c,

sorry for my implicit previous post

why does not modify "leaf cutters and most other ants",according touch rules,
the prep phrase "in having nest" follows immediately "leaf cutters and most other ants"

that's why I am confused after reading OE,
did I miss something ? please point out
appreciate...

have a nice day
>_~

In option D, the prepositional phrase can be considered a part of the following clause:
In having nests, raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs.

Out of option D, you cannot make such a structure using leaf cutters and most other ants. Hence the OE.

"In the corner" is a place - a boy in the corner refers to the boy who is in the corner.
In the contrary, "in having bests" is not a place - it means "in the process of having nests" - in such case a verb is required and the subject of the verb is the noun that this phrase refers to.

I found the answer but I wasn't very comfortable with using "whose" for ants. As I know, we cannot use "who" for the things other than people. Can we use whose for animals or non-living things?

Yes, we can.

'Who' is a nominative pronoun(a subject pronoun) that is usable only for humans. 'Which' is also a nominative pronoun that is usable for other animals, and even all other inanimate things such as books, tables etc -- all in all to say, for everything under the universe

'Whose' is a possessive form of both 'who' and 'which' and hence is universally usable in common.

sayantanc2k, great thanks to you, as I do find many of your posts in the forum were really helpful.

After reading this, I think I kind of understand it, but not fully. As a non-native speaker, I hope if I can have some further explanation in D:

1. I can feel "in having" is awkward, I didn't pick up this option. But I don't really understand the explanation in OG for D, why does OG said "in having" refers to raider ants, not the preceding nouns before "in having".

Unlike L and most other ants in having nests situated on the ground, raider ants make portable nests....

Comma sets off these two parts in this sentence, why "in having" as a prepositional phrase modify the noun behind the itself and the comma?

Do you mean this sentence conveys the meaning like this:

The difference between L and most other ants and raider ants in the aspect of having nests situated on the ground is that raider ants make nests.....

2. Does "in having nests situated", have the similar use of have+sth.+done? E.g."having the house painted"

3. Is the following amending valid?
Unlike L and most of other ants (having nests situated on the ground), raider ants make....

I know the use of unlike: "unlike+noun or noun phrase". In the above sentence, can "having nests situated on the ground" modifying (leaf cutters and most of other ants)?

I really wanted to give up in these questions that may not be so relevant to the original purpose of examining from OG, but these questions bothers me several days, I had to finally post them here....hopefully someone will help me on this. Thanks a lot!

Hello Everyone!

This is a great example of a comparison question! Let's take a closer look at it to determine how to best tackle this type of question. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the original question and highlight any major differences between each option in orange:

Unlike the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants, situated underground or in pieces of wood, raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs to form "curtains" of ants that hang from logs or boulders, providing protection for the queen and the colony larvae and pupae.

(A) the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants,
(B) the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants, which are
(C) leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are
(D) leaf cutters and most other ants in having nests
(E) those of leaf cutters and most other ants with nests

After a quick glance over the options, a couple major differences jump out:

1. What they're comparing: the nests of ants / the ants themselves / those of the ants
2. Where the "nests" are located in each option

Since we know this sentence is comparing two items, we MUST first check that the two items being compared are parallel! After reading over the rest of the sentence, we can see that we're comparing "raider ants" to something that's underlined. Let's see which options use parallel structure, and which options fall short:

(A) the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants, --> WRONG
(It's comparing nests to raider ants, which aren't parallel in type.)

(B) the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants, which are --> WRONG
(It's also comparing nests to ants, which aren't parallel in type.)

(C) leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are --> OK
(It's comparing ants to ants, which is parallel!)

(D) leaf cutters and most other ants in having nests --> OK
(It's comparing ants to ants, which is parallel!)

(E) those of leaf cutters and most other ants with nests --> WRONG
(This is comparing ants to "those of" ants, which is not parallel. It is also unclear what "those of" is even referring to.)

We can eliminate options A, B, and E because they haven't created a parallel comparison based on the types of ants.

Let's take a closer look at options C and D to determine which is the best choice. To do this, I've added the options to the rest of the sentence:

(C) Unlike leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are situated underground or in pieces of wood, raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs to form "curtains" of ants that hang from logs or boulders, providing protection for the queen and the colony larvae and pupae.

This is CORRECT because it uses the correct comma placement to indicate that the phrase highlighted in green is a non-essential phrase! It's not necessary to know where leaf cutters and other ants make their nests. It's only important to know that they DON'T do what raider ants do, and this sentence makes that clear with or without that extra information.

(D) Unlike leaf cutters and most other ants in having nests situated underground or in pieces of wood, raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs to form "curtains" of ants that hang from logs or boulders, providing protection for the queen and the colony larvae and pupae.

This options is INCORRECT because it doesn't use the correct comma placement to show that the phrase "in having nests situated underground or in pieces of wood" is a non-essential phrase. It's missing a comma before "in" for this to work. It's also incorrect because "in having" sounds awkward and isn't necessary - just say "having" to convey the same meaning.


There you go - option C is the correct choice!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

Quick clarification: with answer choice C, the sentence looks like this:

Unlike leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are , situated underground or in pieces of wood, raider ants make ...

Is comma after "whose nests are" correct? I did not choose C b/c I thought this comma was misplaced thus C was wrong. Can someone explain this to me? Thank you

Comma is part of the underlined portion of the original sentence and so, with option C, the comma goes away.

Official Explanation (Why option D is incorrect)

Logical predication

As worded, this sentence draws a contrast between raider ants and the nests of leaf cutters and most other ants. The appropriate contrast would be with leaf cutters and most other ants themselves, not their nests.

This sentence correctly compares leaf cutters and other ants with raider ants, but the prepositional phrase in having nests suggests that it is raider ants, not leaf cutters and most other ants, that have nests situated underground or in pieces of wood; however, the rest of the sentence indicates that in fact raider ants' nests are not situated in such locations.

Doubts 

1. " in having nests" How can this prepositional phrase modify Raider ants ?

2. 

Option C>>Unlike leaf cutters and most other ants, whose nests are situated underground or in pieces of wood, raider ants make a portable nest by entwining their long legs to form “curtains” of ants that hang from logs or boulders, providing protection for the queen and the colony larvae and pupae.

Here "Or" is a parallel marker

Which entity is parallel to Prepositional phrase(in pieces of wood) ?



can experts please explain?
chetan2u AjiteshArun
GMATNinja

For D, "Unlike leaf cutters and most other ants in having nests situated underground or in pieces of wood, raider ants make a portable..."

Why does the prepositional phrase ("in having...of wood") modify "raider ants?" It touches the previous noun phrase - "leaf cutters and most other ants." Is the placement of the prepositional phrase odd, resulting in a possibility of modifying the wrong noun (i.e., the raider ants)?

If a situation were to come up like this again, would it break the rules if we were to write "Unlike X [prep phrase], Y...."?

Apologies for all the questions experts. And thank you in advance!

Hi Smitc007 and samgyupsal,

This type of in + ing is adverbial. For example:
1. In driving GME up, they made GameStop a "meme stock". ← This sentence tells us that the clause (they made...) is a result of "in driving". Clearly, "in driving" is not modifying they directly. Instead, it tells us how 'they made GameStop a "meme stock"'.

2. They played a role in driving prices up. ← The "in driving..." does not tell us anything about the clause here. It directly describes the noun role.

In (1), the "in driving..." doesn't have anything to do with the they directly, except to suggest that "they" were the ones who drove GME up. It is adverbial because it gives us a reason for the entire clause. Example (2) is different, because it contains a noun, role, with which in works. (2) can be read as "they played (a role in driving prices up)". That is, in driving prices up is an important component of role.

If we try to make it modify the clause instead, we'll end up with something that is clearly incorrect:
3. In driving prices up, they played a role. ← Unless we're trying only to change how the sentence sounds by moving the in driving prices up to the beginning of the sentence, this sentence is incorrect. "They played a role" cannot be correct on its own (what role?). Also, the meaning is incorrect: ~"through the action of driving prices up, they played a role" (?)

Option D: ants is not like role. Role combines naturally with an in + ing after it. Ants doesn't. This means that it is more reasonable to view in having... as being adverbial (unlike leaf cutters and most other ants is a prepositional phrase, not a clause). The only complete clause there is "raider ants make a portable nest...". That's why it seems as if D is saying "in having nests, raider ants make a portable nest" (although a comma before in would have helped). Both the meaning and the noun after it are incorrect.