Question

this food chain shows organisms in an ocean ecosystem. kelp → sea urchin → sea otter → great white shark use the food chain to complete the text below. if the population of great white sharks decreases, sea otters will be dropdown likely to survive and produce offspring. so, the population of sea otters will likely dropdown.

Explanation:

In a food chain, predators (great white sharks here) control the population of their prey (sea otters). If the predator population (sharks) decreases, the prey (sea otters) face less predation, so they are more likely to survive and reproduce. An increase in survival and reproduction leads to a growth in the sea otter population.

Answer:

First blank: more (or "more likely" - contextually, the idea is increased survival likelihood); Second blank: increase (or "grow", "rise" - indicating population growth due to reduced predation and better survival/reproduction).

(Note: If the dropdowns have options like "more" for the first and "increase" for the second, those would be the selections. The reasoning is based on ecological relationships in food chains, where a decrease in a top predator leads to an increase in its prey's population as predation pressure lessens.)