Final answer:
Helping behavior in organisms evolves as part of their life history strategy when it is more viable than reproducing, thereby ensuring indirect gene propagation and increasing inclusive fitness.
Step-by-step explanation:
Within the context of life history strategies, organisms face a trade-off between using their energy reserves for growth, maintenance, and reproduction. When ecological factors or an organism's life history make reproducing difficult or less advantageous, it may adopt a helping behavior as an alternative strategy.
Helping behavior can be an adaptive response under certain ecological conditions. For example, when resources are scarce or there is a high risk of predation, an organism might increase its inclusive fitness by assisting close relatives with their offspring rather than reproducing itself. This strategy ensures that the helper's genes are passed on to the next generation indirectly. Moreover, this type of altruistic behavior can be favored by natural selection if the benefits of helping outweigh the costs of not reproducing directly.
In summary, if other factors in an organism's life history or its ecology make being a helper more viable than reproducing, then helping behavior might evolve to maximize the individual's inclusive fitness, cementing the behavior as part of the species' adapted life history strategy.
The question is incomplete, The complete question is given below:
"If life history or ecology makes it easier for individuals within a species to serve as helpers rather than engage in direct reproduction, then: How does the species benefit from individuals adopting a helper role instead of pursuing reproduction?