Fig. 2.

The likelihood of territory inheritance drives helping decisions in cooperatively breeding birds. a In cooperative breeding bird species, helpers with a high likelihood of inheriting their resident territory do not invest more in more related offspring (low levels of kin discrimination), whereas when prospects of territory inheritance are limited, subordinates mainly direct help towards related offspring (PGLS model: n = 20 species, P = 0.0001; model output is provided in Supplementary Table 3). b Therefore, helpers provision offspring on average more (mean % offspring food provisioning per helper, relative to breeders) when the probability of inheriting their resident territory is larger (PGLS model: n = 38 species, P < 0.0001; model output is provided in Supplementary Table 4). Dots reflect species averages, and model-predicted regression lines are plotted