A seriously maladaptive trait is unlikely to persist in a given animal population for long, since there is enough gen...

MikeM on May 6, 2021

Hello. I am not an instructor but maybe my understanding will help.

The first step that you should always follow when doing these types of questions is identify the conclusion. The way to see which part of the argument is the conclusion is to see what sentence is supported by all of the other sentences. We can tell in this case that part of the first sentence: "A seriously maladaptive trait is unlikely to persist in a given animal population for long" is the conclusion, since everything that the author says after this is designed to support this idea.

Based off of this, we can tell that "Those lacking the trait will compete more successfully for the available resources", cannot be the conclusion, since it serves as a supporting premise for the subsidiary conclusion, which is the last sentence. You can tell this is the subsidiary conclusion because it is both supported by the previous premise AND in supports the arguments main conclusion. To test this, think about what supports what better. Does the last sentence serve to support the first, or vice versa. This will allow you to differentiate between the subsidiary conclusion and the main conclusion.

Victoria on May 9, 2021

Hi @Guile and @MikeM,

Happy to help!

@MikeM, this is a fantastic explanation. Thanks for helping out your fellow learners!

As @MikeM said, the conclusion of a stimulus will be the main point, or the claim that everything else the author includes in the stimulus is designed to support. The claims that support the conclusion are premises and intermediary conclusions exist in between the two. Intermediary conclusions are premises in that they support the main conclusion, but they are also conclusions in and of themselves.

To demonstrate this, here's an example which has helped several students in the past.

Premise 1: If there are no recorded typhoons in a given month, then it is impossible for a typhoon to form in that month in the future.

Premise 2: No typhoons have ever been recorded during February.

Intermediary Conclusion: Tomorrow is February 1, so there will not be a typhoon for the next month.

Main Conclusion: Therefore, we can take a boat trip in the next month.

We can see that the intermediary conclusion is a conclusion in that it is drawn using the support of both premises. If the main conclusion was not included, the intermediary conclusion would be able to stand alone as the main conclusion of the passage.

However, because there is a main conclusion, the intermediary conclusion can also be considered to be a premise. If we do not take the intermediary conclusion as a premise, we can see that we can no longer draw our main conclusion. The intermediary conclusion provides us with the essential information that there will not be a typhoon for the next month because tomorrow is February 1. We know that no typhoons have been recorded in February which means that it is impossible for a typhoon to form in February. If we do not have the information that tomorrow is February 1, then we cannot conclude that it is safe to take a boat trip in the next month.

In this way, an intermediary conclusion can be considered to be both a premise and a conclusion in and of itself.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.