Based in the information provided, the best explanation for the low numbers of spiders and flies in plot 5 is:

Question

A. centipedes are actively consuming flies and spiders.
B. there were not enough spiders to catch and consume all the flies.
C. there were not enough flies to support a large centipede population.
D. centipedes prefer spiders to flies.

Clarify Question
1. What is the key concept addressed by the question?
2. What type of thinking is required?
3. What key words does the question contain and what do they mean?

Gather Content
1. What do you know about food webs?How does it relate to the question?

Consider Possibilities
1. What other information is related to the question?
2. Which information is most useful?
3. Which food webs make sense?Both spiders and flies are decreased in number, while centipedes are increased in plot 5.

Choose Answer
1. Given what you now know, what information and/or problem solving approach is most likely to produce the correct answer?

Reflect on Process
1. Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process
break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?

Answer 1

A. centipedes are actively consuming flies and spiders.

Clarify Question
1. The question is about a food web, specifically why flies and spiders are less abundant.
2. This question is asking to evaluate explanations about a food web.
3. Flies – prey for spiders
Spiders – prey for centipedes and predators of flies
Centipedes – predators of flies and spiders

Gather Content
1. question?In a food web an organism will
often be prey for some species and a predator of others. As a result the abundance of prey and predators can both influence the numbers of a specific species.

Consider Possibilities
1. If centipedes preferred spiders over flies then the numbers of flies would be more similar to those in plots 1-4.
2. The centipede population is larger than in the other plots, so there must have been enough flies to support them.
3. If there were not enough spiders to consume all of the flies then the number of flies would be increased.

Choose Answer
1. answer?Which food webs would be consistent with these results? The best answer is
that the abundant centipedes ate a lot of flies and spiders, reducing their number in plot 5.

Reflect on Process
1. This question asked you to apply the definitions of deductive and inductive reasoning to specific
examples. If you got the correct answer, great job! If you got an incorrect answer, where did the process
break down?Did you think that flies were not at the bottom of the food web, or centipedes were not at the
top of the food web?