Hello Everyone!
This is a tricky question, so let's dive in! To start, here is the original question with any major differences between the options highlighted in orange:
Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of females-the queen and her sterile female workers.
A. wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of
B. wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of
C. which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society, almost all
D. which means that their society is highly cooperative, organized, and it is almost entirely
E. living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all
After a quick glance over the options, there are a couple things we can focus on:
1. wasps living/wasps that live/which means they/which means that/living (Modifiers)
2. How each options ends (Punctuation/Pronouns/Meaning)
Let's start with #1 on our list: Modifiers. We first need to determine if the word "which" is necessary, and then check to make sure the modifiers don't screw up meaning:
A. wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of --> OK
(Clear the modifier is referring back to "social wasps," and giving more detail about them.)
B. wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of --> OK
(Also clear the modifier is referring to and giving more information on what "social wasps" are.)
C. which means they live in a highly cooperative and organized society, almost all --> WRONG
(Starting the phrase with "which" means it must modify THE ENTIRE PHRASE before the comma, and that's not what it should be modifying. It should only modify "social wasps.")
D. which means that their society is highly cooperative, organized, and it is almost entirely --> WRONG
(Again, starting a modifier with the word "which" means it must modify THE ENTIRE phrase before the comma, and not just "social wasps.")
E. living in a society that is highly cooperative, organized, and it consists of almost all --> WRONG
(The -ing modifier must modify THE ENTIRE PHRASE before the comma, and that's not what we're trying to modify here.)
We can eliminate options C, D, & E because they use the wrong kinds of modifiers for the sentence.
Now that we have it narrowed down to only 2 options, let's tackle any issues with meaning, modifiers, and punctuation. To make problems easier to spot, I've included the non-underlined portions of the sentence:
A. Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps living in a highly cooperative and organized society where they consist almost entirely of females-the queen and her sterile female workers.
This is INCORRECT because we have a vague pronoun! It's not clear what "they" is referring to: yellow jackets, social wasps, society, species? If a pronoun isn't 100% clear, that's a big red flag on the GMAT that this is likely an incorrect choice.
B. Yellow jackets number among the 900 or so species of the world's social wasps, wasps that live in a highly cooperative and organized society consisting almost entirely of females-the queen and her sterile female workers.
This is CORRECT! It uses modifiers correctly, and there are no problems with pronouns, punctuation, or meaning here!
There you go - option B is the correct choice!
Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.
