NATURAL SELECTION is at the heart of everything that matters, or so it seems. Researchers have devoted an incredible effort to describe it, and it has even been proposed as being anticipatory for conditions it has never seen. But what is this mystical force? Is it not just the population effects of competition between species, between individuals, between sexes, between instars, and the searing effects of death? Death is at its heart, and without death, natural selection does not thrive.