1. If the subject of the verb in option B really were LIST, the sentence would be saying that a list exhibits a preference: an obviously absurd idea. What the sentence wants to convey is that certain ANIMALS that figure in a LIST exhibit a preference for using either the right or the left hand: the verb must therefore be the plural EXHIBIT to agree with ANIMALS. (LIST is of course the subject of the following verb HAS BEEN EXPANDED, which is singular to agree with that subject.)
2. Something else that could have helped you to discard option B is the idiom:
the preference to use is unidiomatic, and should be in the form that appears in the correct answer:
a preference for using. One has a PREFERENCE FOR something, and if that something is an action, the verb that expresses it must appear, after the preposition FOR, as a present participle. Thus, PREFERENCE FOR USING.
3. Yet another decision point that option B offers you is the final verb: the intended meaning as given in the correct answer is that the list has been expanded so that the lower vertebrates may be included: thus, HAS BEEN EXPANDED TO INCLUDE expresses this idea. On the other hand, HAS BEEN EXPANDED AND INCLUDES presents two actions that seem to have little to do with each other: the list has at some time been expanded, and the list habitually includes, in the present, the lower vertebrates. That idea is hardly effective. What we want here is a statement of the OBJECTIVE of expanding the list, which is TO INCLUDE the lower vertebrates.
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