I would beg to differ I am afraid. My interpretation is that death is needed to sustain life because you need decomposing matter to feed the chain from the bottom up, otherwise we would all starve. Bacteria included.

And the reason why many species produce so much offspring is because the chances of survival of each offspring is really low or their lifespan is really short, and that is rather evident on us humans. The average family only 100 yrs ago could easily produce 7-12 offspring that would live to see 50 maybe. The more developed, the higher the likelyhood of survival and the longer the lifespan, the lower the birth rate.

As for the resource based limitation of numbers... in that, us humans, present a paradox. In some places, excess resources have not resulted in increased populations in 'developed' countries. Whereas in places with high birth rates scarcity of resources (like food and water) continues to increase...

Thanks for sharing though. Nice to give the neuron a bit of a workout so late in the week!