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GRE Exam
Even the most complex models used in fishery management are cartoons of reality. They reduce hundreds of links in food webs to a handful and inadequately represent processes operating over space. Many of their assumptions are as flawed today as those of the simplest models of the past. Fish stocks, for one. are still assumed to be populations of a species that are isolated from one another. Yet many populations mix at their edges and some even migrate through areas occupied by other populations. Furthermore, the more complex models suffer from a "crisis of complexity"—more is really less. Adding layers of detail, each carrying its own set of assumptions, produces instability. The model's behavior becomes erratic, and conclusions drawn from it can be downright misleading.
In the context of the passage, the highlighted portion serves to
Larvae of many marine invertebrate species delay their metamorphosis into juveniles when cues signaling an appropriate juvenile environment are absent, thereby increasing their likelihood of thriving as juveniles and of ultimately reaching adulthood Nevertheless, delayed metamorphosis has potential costs for juveniles including reduced growth and increased mortality Nearly all evidence of such costs involves species whose larvae do not feed but rather subsist on stored nutrients, indicating that insufficient energy reserves may be an underlying cause of these costs. Supporting this hypothesis are laboratory studies showing that in a certain bryozoan. the prolonged larval swimming that results from delayed metamorphosis is associated with size reductions in the juvenile feeding organ (the lophophore) and that one factor influencing the size of juveniles of certain barnacle species is how long larvae delay metamorphosis However, other studies show that while significantly fewer juvenile Capitella worms survived to adulthood when metamorphosis had been delayed, prolonged larval swimming had no significant effect on juvenile size, suggesting, perhaps, that in some species, factors other than insufficient energy reserves account for the negative effects of the larval stresses that result from delayed metamorphosis.
The passage suggests that the, "bryozoan." the "barnacle species.'" and 'Capitella worms" all share which of the following characteristics?
A certain company made neither a profit nor a loss on the first 1.000 widgets it sold and made a profit of $0.50 on each widget it sold after the first 1.000. If the company's total profit from the sale of widgets was p dollars, what is the number of widgets it sold in terms of p ?
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