Natural Selection Favors Altruism When the Benefit to the Recipient

question 57

Multiple Choice

Natural selection favors altruism when the benefit to the recipient multiplied by the coefficient of relatedness exceeds the cost to the altruist. Which of the following best describes the coefficient of relatedness?

• A) It is a measure of the fraction of genes that, on average, are shared between an altruist and the organism that it benefits.
• B) It is the number of generations that separate an altruist and the organism that it benefits.
• C) It is a measure of the difference in frequencies of altruistic alleles in neighboring populations.
• D) It is a measure of the rate of mutations in altruistic alleles.

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Definitions:

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Coase Theorem

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