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The author of the passage mentions accounts from three white frontiersmen primarily in order to
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Select the sentence that describes the phenomenon that the passage is concerned with finding an explanation for.
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Click on the sentence in the passage that speculates about the effect of human intervention on an observation.
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Migratory songbirds breeding in Eurasia`s temperate forests depend on a summer flush of insects, particularly caterpillars, to feed themselves and their offspring. In some places, these caterpillars are emerging earlier in responses to rising global temperatures. In theory, the songbirds could simply push up their departure from their winter quarters to catch the earlier flush of insect prey. If, however, the birds rely on a fixed cue such as increasing day length to begin flying north, they may be unable to adjust the timing of their migration. Precisely this disruption in the emergence of insects relative to the timing of songbird migration has been identified as the cause of a significant decline in populations of pied flycatchers in the Netherlands.
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The primary function of the highlighted sentence is to
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According to the passage, populations of insects preyed upon by pied flycatchers.
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Widespread climate change challenges a traditional notion that preserving specific chunks of land is an adequate way to protect endangered species. Commitment to particular places has taken conservation a long way, but it works only when the climate is relatively stable. When climate change rather than degraded habitat threatens a species` survival in a particular location, moving the species to new locales might become one way of preserving it. Some ecologists argue that such assisted migration is simply a way to mimic the natural process of dispersal: its adherents intend to transport species from places that have become uninhabitable through places that humans have made impassable. Although it has its risks, assisted migration may be a necessary step in the evolution of conservation.
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The author of the passage implies that some endangered species are unlikely to migrate naturally to habitats better suited to their survival because
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The passage suggests that, in order to adapt to changing conditions, conservationists should
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The North American red squirrel has expanded its range into Indiana in conjunction with an increase in the fragmentation of forests due to agriculture and with d crease in the number of gray squirrels, whose population is sensitive to forest fragmentation. Red squirrels tend to hoard food in a central location, while gray squirrels are scatter hoarders. Burial of nuts by scatter hoarders is highly beneficial for the regeneration of nut-producing trees. Red squirrels would have to collect 1,000 walnuts to achieve the same germination success that results from the handling of 150 walnuts by gray squirrels. If red squirrels successfully colonize the fragmented landscapes of Indian in response to decreasing numbers of gray squirrels, they may not compensate completely for the loss of gray squirrels as seed dispersers.
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The passage implies that compared with gray squirrels red squirrels
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Select the sentence in the passage that provides an illustration of a claim stated elsewhere in the passage.
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Norman Rockwell was the most popular illustrator in the United States during the mid-twentieth century, yet no important artist of his time showed interest in his work. This prompts the question: how good an artist was Rockwell? His technique is an adaptation of standard nineteenth-century verismo (an artistic movement marked by use of common everyday themes), competent but undistinguished. While he had an acute sense of gesture and facial expression, his anatomical competence was limited. In No Swimming (1921), for example, there is a bit of leg visible between the legs of the central figure that belongs to the boy lagging behind, but it is so shapeless that one cannot be considered a sophisticated perversion of expressive purposes as, for example, would the elastic spine in Ingres`s Grande Odalisque. However, Rockwell`s work does exhibit a genius in its fastidiousness about the absolute justness of every expression and its precise positioning of each prop. It is this attention to detail that renders unforgettable his best images, such as the open mouth in the form of an O of the little who has just discovered that there is no Santa Claus.
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The passage is primarily concerned with
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It can be inferred that the author of the passage would probably agree with which of the following statements about Rockwell`s work?
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Select the sentence in the passage that indicates Rockwell`s artistic reputation among his contemporaries.
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Ecologists study how millions of species share the world, rather than take on the whole planet at once, they generally focus on a single ecosystem, be it a prairie, a tidal flat, or a sand dune. Even within those limits, they are frustrated by porous frontiers. As a result, ecologists have done some of their most important work on islands, nature`s own isolated laboratories, which may be colonized only a few times over the course of millions of years. On them, ecologists have figured out how the size of a given habitat determine how many species it can support. They have then applied that knowledge to the mainland, showing how fragmented ecosystems become like archipelagoes, where extinctions can strike.
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It can be inferred that the term “porous frontiers” is used to refer to
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In the context in which it appears, "isolated" most nearly means
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The border decoration in medieval manuscripts referred to as pen flourishing reached great artistic heights in the northern Netherlands in the 1400s. The regional variants in form that evolved make flourishing a useful tool for localizing and roughly dating manuscripts. When the first printed books appeared in that region, many copies were still traditionally decorated by hand with such flourishing. Since books` publication can usually be dated with far more accuracy than manuscripts, studying these decorations in early printed books might lead to a more precise dating of the penwork in manuscripts. It is of less help in localizing the flourishing. Upon completion, copies of printed books were often sold unadorned, to be decorated elsewhere as commissioned by their buyers.
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