The migration patterns of the monarch butterfly are dictated more by environmental cues than by innate timing. While the butterflies instinctively head south for winter, freezing temperatures can delay their journey, ______ the insects to roost in trees until the weather warms.

Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, a landmark novel of the magical realism ______ established the author as a leading figure of the Latin American literary boom.

Like many insects, periodical cicadas survive underground for years as nymphs before emerging. To breach the hard surface of the soil when it is time to emerge, the nymphs ______ their forelegs, which are modified for digging and tunneling.

That Mount Everest is the highest peak above sea level is a fact known to most ______ determining exactly how to measure its height has been a subject of debate among geologists for decades.

When tomatoes were introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century, they were widely feared and avoided. Wealthy Europeans believed the fruits were poisonous because the acid in the juice leached lead from their pewter plates, rendering ______ toxic to the diner.

Astronomer Vera Rubin discovered that galaxies rotate too fast to be held together by visible matter alone, suggesting the presence of invisible "dark matter." Whether this dark matter consists of heavy particles or some other phenomenon ______ remains a central question in cosmology.

The poison dart frog secretes potent chemicals through its skin to deter predators. Paradoxically, in some ecosystems, the very toxins the frog produces to ensure its safety actually ______ the likelihood of detection, as certain predators have evolved to track the scent of these chemicals.

In her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, author Joan Didion uses a fragmented narrative structure ______ the disorientation and grief she experienced following the sudden death of her husband.

Before writing The Color Purple (1982), Alice Walker worked as a social worker and teacher. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book remains her most famous work, but her poetry ______ widely praised since the late 1960s.

In his abstract geometric paintings, Kazimir Malevich sought to detach art from the burden of representing reality. In his famous piece Black Circle, the solid black circle floating in a white void ______ the supremacy of pure feeling over objective representation.