Why would an individual give up its own breeding opportunity to act as a helper, assisting others to raise their young? Darwin worried that equivalent behavior in bees and other insects was possibly fatal to his theory of natural selection. The same William Hamilton who despaired over the coloring of the eclectus parrot is credited with rescuing Darwin’s theory in the 1960s with his theory of inclusive fitness, also known as kin selection—which suggests that helping your close relatives can be a good way to pass on your own genetic material because relatives share a percentage of your genes.
