Answer first
A model ecology should not keep only the single highest score. It should keep the best artifact for each important niche, plus a few promising challengers. That is how a lab preserves options, supports routing, and avoids losing specialized capability.
What counts as a niche
A niche is a useful region of behavior. Examples include low-latency formatting, legal clause extraction, code patch explanation, source citation checking, industrial telemetry triage, and local private summarization. Two models can be close in total score but occupy different niches if their strengths serve different contracts.
Speciation in practice
Speciation does not require biological machinery. A file-backed lab can compute behavior descriptors from evaluation results, then group candidates by descriptor similarity. The archive keeps elites per group, not just a global winner.
PROCEDURE update_niche_archive(candidate, archive)
descriptor <- BUILD_BEHAVIOR_DESCRIPTOR(candidate.evaluation)
niche <- FIND_CLOSEST_NICHE(descriptor, archive)
IF candidate.score > archive[niche].champion.score THEN
archive[niche].champion <- candidate
ELSE IF candidate.novelty > novelty_floor THEN
archive[niche].challengers.ADD(candidate)
END IF
TRIM_ARCHIVE_BY_LOCAL_BUDGET(archive)
RETURN archive
END PROCEDUREPositive outcome
The result is a model portfolio that becomes more useful over time. The lab can route routine requests to frugal specialists, hold broad champions for ambiguous work, and retain promising descendants for later recombination.
Source reports used for this guide
These reports are preserved verbatim in the site archive. The guide above is an editorial synthesis and may narrow, qualify, or reorganize claims from the source material.