Is death a product of evolution

I am assuming the OP was referring to death by aging."Aging is a product of evolutionary neglect" - Aubrey de Gray (1)Short answer: No. It is far more important for an organism to reproduce than it is for it to live forever, or even a long time. Death is a byproduct of our biochemistry which evolution has not had enough selective pressure to fix.While a longer lifespan has some obvious evolutionary advantages such as the opportunity to go through more breeding cycles and produce more offspring, there is a much greater selective pressure to simply reproduce at all; strictly speaking, from an evolutionary perspective an organism has to live precisely long enough to reproduce and pass on it's genetic information, and not a moment longer. Evolving long or unlimited lifespans is not a priority.In addition, it is also difficult. The metabolic processes that result in aging are very complex; solving the problem of aging is a difficult one for evolution and natural selection.(1) A very interesting presenation by the eloquent and entertaining Aubrey de Gray. Mostly OT, but it does cover the mechanisms of aging, and he also addresses this exact question regarding evolution and death at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iYpxRXlboQP.S. I would be interested to hear people's thoughts on the apparent positive correlation between life-span and species complexity.Edited by Jarrod, : No reason given.