The second notion is “multiplicity.” Living creatures, including alien species, tend to make more offspring and have bigger broods than the environment can necessarily maintain. “Nature,” according to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “[is] red in tooth and claw”—both in our Galaxy, and, we may assume, in galaxies far, far away. One might live in a world in which only a small fraction of the Ewoks and Exogorths that are brought into existence actually survive, or manage to evade predators long enough to mate.
