I had a dream last night where I met Charles Darwin and showed him the creative field of speculative evolution and then showed him my own work and asked for critique. He considered it and then told me that to add something to an organism I must also take away something else. I got really mad about this, like cmon, look at platypuses bro. Then I woke up slightly grumpy and went about my day. I kept thinking about it and it began to make more sense.
Like to improve and specialize in one direction you must often sacrifice features that apply to other areas. You know, the reason fish are so good at being fish is because they don't have legs. Things really shouldn't try to be too many things at once. Also, being a good generalist often means being a poor specialist. Consider coyotes. They are excellent at surviving in a wide variety of environments and conditions, but they don't really apply themselves to specific niches. They get out competed by a lot of things such as wolves. They are very resilient when it comes to change. Whereas a more specialized organism may inhabit a very important niche but they are more fragile and likely to suffer if their environment changes. Within their environment they are able to out compete most less adapted organisms such as the generalists.
So it's really just a lot of give and take across the board. I've reinvented the concept of a zero sum game I guess lol
