"Disappearing Ohio Butterflies Affects All Insects"

Question

by Vicky Stein

For my 11th birthday, I received a perfect, weird, road-trip amusement: a book filled with pictures and descriptions to help kids decode the splatters of insects that smacked into the front of a moving vehicle. Whether that sounds like macabre fun or makes you grumble about keeping the windshield clean, a steep decline in reported bug splatters in recent years should actually make us worried, entomologists and ecologists say.

In a new study published Tuesday in PLOS ONE, a group of researchers analyzed one of the rare data sets that tracks butterfly abundance, taken from 21 years of volunteer surveys in Ohio. They found an average population decline of 2 percent per year, which means that over the course of the study, Ohio lost more than a third of its butterfly population.

Some species of butterflies showed no change in abundance, however, and a few others actually became more common.

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Question
Use the excerpt from “Butterflies are disappearing in Ohio. Here’s what that means for insects everywhere” to answer the question.
Why does the author talk about windshields in the last paragraph? Select the two correct answers.(1 point)
Responses

to suggest that people cannot trust news sources
to suggest that people cannot trust news sources

to offer evidence that insect populations have declined
to offer evidence that insect populations have declined

to dispute a claim from paragraph 2
to dispute a claim from paragraph 2

to refer to an idea from paragraph 1
to refer to an idea from paragraph 1

to argue that there is too little known about insect populations
to argue that there is too little known about insect populations
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Answer 1

The two correct answers are:

1. to offer evidence that insect populations have declined - The mention of a steep decline in reported bug splatters implies that fewer insects are impacting windshields, which serves as evidence of the declining insect populations.

2. to refer to an idea from paragraph 1 - The reference to "splatters of insects that smacked into the front of a moving vehicle" relates back to the initial idea presented in paragraph 1 about tracking bugs and the associated decline in their visibility on windshields.