Robin Hanson has an interesting argument here.

To flesh out his statistical argument as it applied to this case: there are certain general trends (what you call universals) across most animals, and most human societies; while there exist species (and cultures) that are exceptions to many of them, there's are reason they are exceptions.

To take one of your examples, while it may be short term beneficial for a species to reproduce completely without genetic recombination, it greatly limits potential future evolution since it's no longer possible for beneficial mutations from different individuals to combine.

Edit: See also Eliezer's post evolving to extinction.