<< Research on blennies, a family of fish that have repeatedly left the sea for land, suggests that being a 'jack of all trades' allows species to make the dramatic transition onto land but adapting into a 'master of one' allows them to stay there. >>
<< a flexible diet and behavior were likely to be instrumental in the transition to land. However, once out of the water, restrictions on the type of food available triggered major evolutionary changes, particularly to their teeth, as land dwelling blennies have become specialists in scraping algae and detritus from rocks. >>
<< having a broad diet or being behaviorally flexible can help you move into a new habitat. But once there, this flexibility becomes eroded by natural selection. This presumably means those highly specialized species are less likely to be able to make further transitions, or cope with abrupt environment changes in their existing habitat. >> Terry Ord.
How fish got onto land, and stayed there. British Ecological Society. Jun 17, 2020.
Terry J. Ord, Peter J. Hundt. Crossing extreme habitat boundaries: Jack‐of‐all‐trades facilitates invasion but is eroded by adaptation to a master‐of‐one. Funct Ecol. doi: 10.1111/ 1365-2435.13600. Jun 16, 2020.
Also
The multifactorial relationship system evolved in Blenny. FonT. Jun 2, 2017.
