 The important point for now is that, on Dawkins’ analysis, the fact that replicators are the only survivors of the evolution-by-selection process automatically answers also the question of who owns the adaptations. Adaptations must be seen as being designed for the good of the active-germ-line replicator for the simple reason that replicators are the only entities around long enough to enjoy them over the course of natural selection. The genic selectionist acknowledges that the phenotype is “the all important instrument of replicator preservation,” and that genes’ phenotypic effects are organized into organisms (that thereby might benefit from them in their lifetimes) (1982b: 114). But because only the active germ-line replicators survive, they are the true locus of adaptations (1982b: 113; emphasis added). The other things that benefit over the short term (e.g., organisms with adaptive traits) are merely the tools of the real survivors, the real owners. Hence, Dawkins rejects the vehicle approach partly because he identifies it with the manifestor-of-adaptation approach, which he has answered by definition, in terms of the long-term beneficiary.