An Ecologist Is Studying the Relationship Between a Beetle Species

Multiple Choice

An ecologist is studying the relationship between a beetle species and a flower species. She examines six plants and counts the number of beetles and the number of flowers on each plant. $$\begin{array} { | l | l | } \hline \text { Number of flowers } & \text { Number of beetles } \\\hline 1 & 1 \\\hline 2 & 4 \\\hline 3 & 9 \\\hline 4 & 16 \\\hline 5 & 25 \\\hline 6 & 36 \\\hline\end{array}$$
What can we conclude from the data?

A) Flowers cause beetles to be more abundant.
B) Beetles cause plants to grow more flowers.
C) A third unmeasured variable causes both beetles and flowers to increase.
D) There is no way to determine causation in the relationship between flowers and beetles based solely on this data set.