Whiteflies Are Common Pest Insects Found on Cotton, Tomato, Poinsettia

Multiple Choice

Whiteflies are common pest insects found on cotton, tomato, poinsettia, and many other plants. Nymphs are translucent and mostly sessile, feeding on their host plant's phloem (sap) from the undersides of leaves. They undergo incomplete metamorphosis into winged adults. Because whitefly nymphs cannot escape predation by moving, you hypothesize that their translucent bodies make them hard to spot by predators. How could you directly test this hypothesis?

A) Compare rates of predation on whitefly nymphs on plant leaves of different colors (for example, red versus green poinsettia leaves) .
B) Compare rates of predation on whitefly nymphs coated with a nontoxic dye versus undyed whitefly nymphs.
C) Compare rates of predation on whitefly nymphs versus whitefly adults.
D) Compare rates of predation on whitefly nymphs by predators that are translucent versus predators that are not translucent.