Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence i… | Verbal SAT Question

In a 2018 study, Hana Morrow and colleagues reported that great tits (Parus major) living near highways sing at markedly higher pitches than great tits living in quiet woodlands, and they attributed the difference to the birds’ efforts to be heard over low-frequency traffic noise. Morrow and colleagues, however, recorded most of the urban birds at dawn and most of the woodland birds in the late afternoon. In a 2023 review of research on birdsong in noisy environments, Tomás Reyes and colleagues point out that many songbirds naturally sing at higher pitches in the early morning than later in the day. A comparison that fails to account for this daily variation could therefore credit traffic noise with a difference that stems, at least partly, from when the recordings were made.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

It presents evidence that great tits in woodlands sing at higher pitches than researchers previously believed.

It explains how the timing of Morrow and colleagues’ recordings could have led them to overstate the effect of traffic noise.

It rejects the idea that traffic noise has any influence on the pitch of great tits’ songs.

It offers Reyes and colleagues’ explanation for why songbirds sing at higher pitches at dawn than later in the day.