Final answer:
It is true that the inclusive fitness of a donor's behavior is influenced by the relationship coefficient with the recipient. This concept is central to understanding behaviors in social insects and other animals, where actions may seem altruistic but ultimately serve to benefit the actor's genetic dissemination.
Step-by-step explanation:
True. When an individual (the donor) performs a specific behavior towards another individual (the recipient), the inclusive fitness of the donor is indeed affected by the coefficient of relationship between the donor and the recipient. This is because inclusive fitness takes into account not just an organism's own reproductive success, but also the impact of its actions on the reproductive success of related individuals sharing common genes.
Inclusive fitness benefits can explain behaviors in social insects like bees, ants, and termites, where sterile workers support the queen. Although these workers don't reproduce, their actions help pass on shared genetic material and increase their inclusive fitness. Similarly, mammals like emperor penguins take risks to feed their young, a behavior that enhances the likelihood that their genes survive to the next generation through kin selection.
Behaviors such as reciprocal altruism in monkey species show that even between unrelated individuals, there can be a mutually beneficial exchange that increases each individual's fitness. Overall, these behaviors may be viewed as altruistic, but they can ultimately contribute to the actor's inclusive fitness, either directly or indirectly.