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Biologist Nathalie Stroeymeyt and her team found that black garden ants demonstrated a sophisticated form of “architectural immunity.” When confronted with fungal pathogens, these ants modified their excavation patterns in several strategic ways to speed up nest growth, increase spacing between entrances, and reduce the centrality of key chambers (containing the queen, food, or nursery). The team noted that these architectural modifications weren’t random but specifically arranged to minimize fungal spread.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
A team of scientists noticed that fungal pathogen exposure causes black garden ants to abandon their existing nest structures.
A study found that black garden ants deliberately modify their nest architecture to keep a harmful fungus from spreading.
According to a team of biologists, black garden ants build larger nests when exposed to a harmful fungus than they otherwise would build.
A study noted that black garden ants exposed to a harmful fungus tend to dig longer tunnels in their nests instead of reducing the centrality of the nest’s chambers.
Honeybees perform special movements—called the “waggle dance”—to communicate to other bees where to find food sources like flower patches. The dance shows both the distance and direction to the food source through the bee’s specific movements. This amazing communication helps the entire hive collect nectar efficiently. First decoded by scientists in the 1940s, the “waggle dance” remains one of the most complex forms of communication in the insect world.
What is the main topic of the text?
A difference between how bees and people communicate
A dance used by honeybees to communicate
Several scientific discoveries from the 1940s
Seasonal changes in honeybees’ diet
When a river is dammed, the sediment it carries settles in the reservoir instead of flowing downstream. Starved of that sediment, the delta at the river's mouth gradually erodes, and the coastal wetlands it supports shrink.
Some engineers now release controlled pulses of water from dams, which carry stored sediment past the barrier. Early trials suggest that the approach can slow delta erosion without reducing the amount of water a dam can supply.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
Dams cause deltas to erode by trapping sediment, but releasing water in controlled pulses may offer a remedy.
Dams are no longer necessary for supplying water to nearby communities.
Deltas erode primarily because of rising sea levels rather than human construction.
Engineers disagree about whether river sediment matters to coastal wetlands.
Primarily encountered by modern readers as inert written texts, the vernacular riddles of early medieval England contain “implicit vestiges” of an interactive performance context, scholar Jill Frederick argues. Locative phrases (e.g., “here” and “now”) scattered throughout the riddles indicate the space shared by their speakers and audiences; the common refrain “say what I am called” invites a verbalized response; and the conflation of many of the riddles’ speakers with their solutions (typically animals, objects, or natural phenomena) suggests a form of dramatic impersonation perhaps meant to entertain during public gatherings.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
It is reasonable to conclude based on textual evidence from the vernacular riddles of early medieval England that they were mainly performed at large public gatherings, though documentation of the locations in which they were performed is unlikely to exist.
Linguistic evidence found within the vernacular riddles of early medieval England suggests that they may have been intended to be performed in communal settings, though this isn’t how they are generally experienced by readers today.
People of early medieval England likely found that era’s vernacular riddles to be more amusing than modern readers do, given that there is substantial evidence to indicate that they are best experienced in the context of an interactive performance rather than exclusively as written texts.
Scholars once assumed that the vernacular riddles of early medieval England were originally intended to be read silently, but newly uncovered historical documents corroborate Jill Frederick’s assertion that they may in fact have been intended primarily for oral performance.
The following text is from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1830 short story “Sir William Phips.”
The knowledge, communicated by the historian and biographer, is analogous to that which we acquire of a country by the map,—minute, perhaps, and accurate, and available for all necessary purposes, but cold and naked, and wholly destitute of the mimic charm produced by landscape painting. These defects are partly remediable, and even without an absolute violation of literal truth, although by methods rightfully interdicted to professors of biographical exactness.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
Historians’ fidelity to the truth often results in work that is less engaging than it could be.
Writers of fiction possess storytelling skills that historians do not.
Maps are more practical to own than paintings.
The more famous a person is, the more likely that person is to attract the attention of a historian.