Question

wildebeest and rainfall
the following is the transcript from an interview with tony sinclair - a scientist studying the serengeti.
\in order to understand food, we had to go out and measure it. instead of going out and measuring it, it turns out what they eat is grass, and theres special types of grass so each of these different species eat a little bit different type of food. but, instead of trying to measure that which is actually a very difficult thing to do, its um you know laborious and time consuming and of course we have to measure it over a number of years, so what we did was set about looking at what produced the food, the grass. and of course, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to see that grass, if you if you water your lawn, the grass grows! so the amount of growth, is determined by how often you water your lawn. so, what we did was to set about doing some experiments looking at how grass grew with how much water, and we got a very close relationship as you might expect. so we were able to use rainfall as an indicator of how much food there was available for these animals.\

1. what is your prediction about where the wildebeest will be based on the rainfall data?

Explanation:

From the interview, we know that wildebeest eat grass, and grass growth is related to water (rainfall). Areas with more rainfall will have more grass (food for wildebeest). So we can predict that wildebeest will be in areas with higher rainfall because those areas will have more grass available as food.

Answer:

Wildebeest will likely be in areas with higher rainfall. This is because rainfall determines grass growth (their food source), and more rainfall leads to more grass, so they will move to or stay in regions with greater rainfall to access sufficient food.