The Pith: In evolution if you want to win in the long run you don’t want all your eggs in one basket, even if that’s the choicest basket. Sh*t happens, and you better have some back up strategies.
Diversity is a major question in evolutionary biology. In particular, why is there so much diversity, so that the tree of life manifests a multitude of morphs? Might there not be some supreme replicator which emerges from the maelstrom to conquer all before it? This is actually the scenario which unfolds in much of science fiction, with monomorphic grey goo eating everything in its path (a more aesthetically differentiated variant of the super-species emerges in Brian W. Aldiss’ Helliconia Winter). As it is, life on earth does not seem to be converging upon an optimum phenotype for all individuals. In contrast, it seems to be going in the opposite direction broadly speaking (thinking on billion year scales), with the shift from the monotony of communal cyanobacteria to the riotous diversity of tropical forest biomes and coral reefs.
There are many ways you might be able to explain this diversity. Temporal and spatial heterogeneity …