When an organism reproduces by budding, how does the new organism start growing? from within the parent organism from the merging of two parent organisms from the outer surface of the parent organism from a spore produced by a parent organism?

Budding is an asexual form of reproduction, it only requires one parent. It's when the parent cell makes enough energy to recreate an exact copy of itself. It would be the third answer, from the outer surface of the organism.

Exposure to solar flares would be the correct answer

The rate that would change would be the  searching efficiency/attack rate. there are only two other rates in this model: the  growth rate of prey, and the  predator or consumer mortality rate.the  searching efficiency/attack rate is what indicates how effectively can a predator capture its prey whether in the searching process or actual capturing/attacking process.