The passage suggests that biologists were skeptical of Colwell's claim to have isolated V. cholerae from the Chesapea...

shunhe on June 30, 2020

Hi @sassouel,

Thanks for the question! So we’re asked here to find why the biologists were skeptical of Colwell’s claim that she isolated V. cholerae from the Chesapeake Bay. Well, let’s take a look at the part that talks about this skepticism, which is at the beginning of the second paragraph. Here, we see that the claim was met with great skepticism, and we’re told why starting in line 16. Biologists could’ve believe that V. cholerae could persist without a human host; in other words, they thought that it needed humans to live. Which means that it would’ve been unable to persist in seawater by itself (since that would entail the absence of a human host). It’s because of this that the skepticism came, and so (B) is the correct answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.