[Terr_]

> Isn't there a concept similar to "no free lunch" in biology?

There's a difference between "there are probably trade-offs here" versus "this is impossible because otherwise it would have happened already."

Consider that land plants evolved lignin to grow tall, leading to gigatons of free lunch sitting around for tens of thousands of years before anything else found the trick of digesting it.

If there weren't any free--or at least below-cost--lunches out there, nothing would evolve, because there'd be no benefit in changing anything.