Parallel evolution

Parallel evolution is the development of a similar trait in related, but distinct, species descending from the same ancestor, but from different clades.

Given a particular trait that occurs in each of two lineages descended from a specified ancestor, it is possible in theory to define parallel and convergent evolutionary trends strictly, and distinguish them clearly from one another. However the criteria for defining convergent as opposed to parallel evolution often are unclear in practice, so that arbitrary diagnosis is common in some cases.

When two species are similar in a particular character, evolution is defined as parallel if the ancestors shared that similarity; if they did not, the evolution of that character in those species is defined as convergent. However, this distinction is not clear-cut. For one thing, the stated conditions are partly a matter of degree; all organisms share more or less recent common ancestors. In evolutionary biology the question of how far back to look for similar ancestors, and how similar those ancestors need be for one to consider parallel evolution to have taken place, cannot always be resolved. Some scientists accordingly have argued that parallel evolution and convergent evolution are more or less indistinguishable. Others insist that in practice we should not shy away from the gray area because many important distinctions between parallel and convergent evolution remain.

When the ancestral forms are unspecified or unknown, or the range of traits considered is not clearly specified, the distinction between parallel and convergent evolution becomes more subjective. For instance, Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker describes the striking similarity between placental and marsupial forms as the outcome of convergent evolution, because mammals on their respective ancestral continents had a long evolutionary history prior to the extinction of the dinosaurs. That period of separation would have permitted the accumulation of many relevant differences. Stephen Jay Gould differed; he described some of the same examples as having started from the common ancestor of all marsupials and placentals, and hence amounting to parallel evolution. And certainly, whenever similarities can be described in concept as having evolved from a common attribute deriving from a single remote ancestral line, that legitimately may regarded as parallel evolution.

In contrast, where quite different structures clearly have been co-opted to a similar form and function, one must necessarily regard the evolution as convergent. For example, consider Mixotricha paradoxa, a eukaryotic microbe which has assembled a system of rows of apparent cilia and basal bodies closely resembling the system in ciliates. However, on inspection it turns out that in Mixotricha paradoxa, what appear to be cilia actually are smaller symbiont microorganisms; there is no question of parallel evolution in such a case. Again, the differently oriented tails of fish and whales derived at vastly different times from radically different ancestors and any similarity in the resultant descendants must therefore have evolved convergently; any case in which lineages do not evolve together at the same time in the same ecospace might be described as convergent evolution at some point in time.

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