Final answer:
The term 'cooperative breeding' is used to describe the strategy where non-reproductive adults in a species help care for the young; this behavior is common in species that devote significant energy to parental care and is contrasted with high fecundity species that produce many self-sufficient offspring with minimal care.
Step-by-step explanation:
The descriptive term coined to refer to animals that have overlapping adult generations in which non-reproductive individuals cooperate to care for young is cooperative breeding. In cooperative breeding, animal species, especially birds and mammals, may involve non-reproductive adults assisting with the raising of offspring.
This behavior increases the chances of the young's survival and typically takes place in species where the offspring require significant care and development after birth, like humans, kangaroos, and pandas, which provide extensive parental care. On the other hand, species with high fecundity, such as many marine invertebrates, produce many offspring with little to no parental care; these offspring are often self-sufficient at a very early age due to the energetic tradeoff of producing more offspring in lieu of parental investment.