Answer :
Answer:
If Passage 1 is adapted from "Ancient DNA Tells Story of Giant Eagle
Evolution," © 2005 by Public Library of Science, then the answer would be as follows:
It can reasonably be inferred from Passage 1 that, for most bird species, there is a certain size at which they
a. are unable to fly.
Explanation:
According to Passage 1, "When the dodo's ancestor (thought to be a migratory pigeon) settled on this island with abundant food, no competition from terrestrial mammals, and no predators, it could survive without flying, and thus was freed from the energetic and size constraints of flight. "
"Size constraints of flight" means that the birds that are big to a certain size cannot/could not fly. Taking examples of some birds once roaming New Zealand into consideration, they were giant birds with large wingspans, and therefore, they were unable to fly (flightless).
Other options, namely b. require less energy when flying; c. are more likely to attack other animals; and d. do have a to compete with other birds for food, are nowhere found in Passage 1. In other words, No related information is available.
Therefore, the most possible answer is a.
The inference can be made that majority of the bird species, there exists a particular size at which:
a). are unable to fly.
Bird Species
As per Passage 1, the author offers descriptions regarding the various constraints that affect the flight of the birds.
The demonstration of certain birds in New Zealand having bigger wingspans leads them to be flightless.
Therefore, to an extent, the size impacts the flight of the birds and they cannot fly.
Thus, option a is the correct answer.
Learn more about "Bird Species" here:
brainly.com/question/5328405
The given question is incomplete. The complete question is as follows:
For reasons that are not entirely clear, when animals make
their way to isolated islands, they tend to evolve relatively
quickly toward an outsized or pint-sized version of their
mainland counterpart.
Perhaps the most famous example of an island giant—and,
sadly, of species extinction—is the dodo, once found on the
Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. When the dodo's ancestor
(thought to be a migratory pigeon) settled on this island with
abundant food, no competition from terrestrial mammals, and
no predators, it could survive without flying, and thus was
freed from the energetic and size constraints of flight. New
Zealand also had avian giants, now extinct, including the
flightless moa, an ostrich-like bird, and Haast's eagle
(Harpagornis moored), which had a wingspan up to 3 meters.
Though Haast's eagle could fly—and presumably used its
wings to launch brutal attacks on the hapless moa—its body
mass (10–14 kilograms) pushed the limits for self-propelled
flight.
As extreme evolutionary examples, these island birds can
offer insights into the forces and events shaping evolutionary
change. In a new study, Michael Bunce et al. compared
ancient mitochondrial DNA extracted from Haast's eagle
bones with DNA sequences of 16 living eagle species to
better characterize the evolutionary history of the extinct
giant raptor. Their results suggest the extinct raptor
underwent a rapid evolutionary transformation that belies its
kinship to some of the world's smallest eagle species.
The authors characterized the rates of sequence evolution
within mitochondrial DNA to establish the evolutionary relationships between the different eagle species. Their
analysis places Haast's eagle in the same evolutionary lineage
as a group of small eagle species in the genus Hieraaetus.
Surprisingly, the genetic distance separating the giant eagle
and its more diminutive Hieraaetus cousins from their last
common ancestor is relatively small.
Q. It can reasonably be inferred from Passage 1 that, for most bird
species, there is a certain size at which they:
a. are unable to fly.
b. require less energy when flying.
c. are more likely to attack other animals.
d. do have a to compete with other birds for food.