Q1 - "Hot spot" is a term that

[ganbayou]

Hi,

Just wanted to double check...so "environmental battle" is environment effort or resources right?
(At first I thought it is a battle between animals.)

[ohthatpatrick]

Let me put up a complete explanation for posterity.

Question Type: Logical Completion (Inference)

Task: derive a safely worded conclusion that synthesizes the multiple ideas offered

- Definition of "hot spot" (areas where you have animals that basically ONLY exist in that region ... "endemic species")
- "hot spots" can be threatened by commercial development ruining habitat
- losing "endemic species" accounts for most extinctions nowadays

Putting that together so far, I'd be expecting some causal chain like
commercial development -> ruins habitat -> makes endemic species go extinct

The beginning of the last sentence is basically, "So if you only have a little money to spend and you DON'T want endemic species to go extinct, then _______ ."

Given what we've talked about, we would be synthesizing the information by saying something like "spend your money on keeping commercial development from ruining habitats of endemic species".

Let's check the answers
(A) "only" is extreme and where is the commercial development thing? Eliminate.

(B) this is close to "don't ruin habitats of endemic species", i.e. "hot spots". Keep it.

(C) "all" as "equally" and "equally" is crazy extreme. And this does nothing to loop back to our earlier ideas.

(D) what? the "most" is overly strong/specific, and the tone is overly pessimistic. "If you can only wage a few battles, then just accept that most battles will be lost". Even though that may be true, that doesn't sound like a completion to the argument because it doesn't loop back on the ideas mentioned. You would expect, "if you can only wage a few battles, then make sure you're fighting the most important ones."

(E) this sounds new and seems to go beyond anything we already talked about. We don't want a new idea, but rather a safe synopsis.

(B) is apparently the correct answer. It didn't actually mention commercial development because that's only brought up as a factor that leads to "many" hot spots being imperiled. We have no reason to focus on commercial development as the MOST IMPORTANT enemy. We just have to focus on "hot spots" because loss of "hot spot animals" (endemic species) is what causes MOST modern-day extinctions.

Hope this helps.