There has been considerable ambiguity, if not downright confusion, in the literature of evolutionary biology regarding specific technical usage of the terms replication and replicator . The ambiguity of usage can be illustrated by considering the concept of replicator longevity . I say this for two distinct reasons. Firstly, A-longevity is the sense of longevity with which Dawkins first introduced the slogan.
Genes are capable of prodigious feats of fecundity and fidelity.
In the form of copies of itself, a single gene may persist for a hundred million individual lifetimes. As striking as this slogan is, it can easily be misunderstood. But whether it succeeds in practice or not, any germ line replicator is potentially immortal .