Question

From a parent's perspective, all offspring are equivalent, having a coefficient of relationship of 0.5 to the parent. Parents should thus compare the benefit (B) of providing additional care to an offspring to the cost (C) of forgoing some future reproductive success. When the benefit:cost (B:C) ratio falls below one of the following values a parent will cease providing care to an offspring in favor of producing a new one. Which value is it?

1) 2.0
2) 1.0
3) 0.5
4) 0.25

Answer 1

A parent will stop providing care to an offspring over producing a new one when the benefit:cost ratio falls below 1.0. This decision is influenced by parental care strategies and fecundity, which defines the reproductive potential of a parent.

Step-by-step explanation:

From the perspective of parental investment theory in biology, when the benefit:cost (B:C) ratio of providing additional care to an offspring falls below 1.0, a parent will cease providing care to that offspring in favor of producing a new one. This is because a B:C ratio of less than 1.0 indicates that the cost of care is greater than the benefit received, which means investing more in current offspring would reduce the parent's evolutionary fitness compared to producing more offspring.

It is important to note that organisms that invest in long-term parental care tend to have fewer offspring, as a significant amount of energy and resources is devoted to each offspring, which decreases their potential reproductive capacity, or fecundity. In contrast, species with high fecundity usually provide very little parental care, producing many offspring to ensure enough survive to maturity despite a high predation rate.