Critical Reading>Sentence Completions
Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
The scientist ascribed the ------- of the park's remaining trees to the ------- of the same termite species that had damaged homes throughout the city.
(A) decimation . . prevalence
(B) survival . . presence
(C) growth . . mutation
(D) reduction . . disappearance
(E) study . . hatching