I'm sure that any ontology that desires to be applicable to the universe as a whole should contain novelty emergence mechanics.
Before natural selection was discovered it was natural to believe-assume that the entire universe was created by primordial general intelligence (aka God) as intelligence was the only known thing capable of explaining novelty emergence. Evolution and natural selection is the best explanation for novelty emergence that we have at the moment: an endless process of survival and accumulation of novelty.
Quote from Applying Universal Darwinism to evaluation of Terminal values (also see Terminal Value definition).
Desire for novelty emergence explanation comes from reformulated ancient question “why is there something rather than nothing?”. Reformulated into: “why these structures exist instead of other?”
And at the moment we really don't have a better mechanism-explanation for novelty emergence (in general) than natural selection.
Hence it would be a good try to embrace Universal Darwinism as an important part of a hypothetical ontology suitable for the universe as a whole. But surely natural selection by itself is not enough for ontology. But I believe that it's one of the core components.