• Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Sharing because I was delighted to learn this: trees are also an example of convergent evolution. I’m personally rooting for us to become trees. Pun intended.

    • Wofls@feddit.org
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      17 days ago

      Okay so now we are looking at some kind of tree-crab-train as the crown of creation, am I understanding this correctly?

    • dondelelcaro@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      There’s likely some cases of convergent evolution, but I’m not sure this is settled for all trees.

      I’d suspect that at least some trees with last common ancestors that are shrubs have re-enabled genes that enable the tree phenotype rather than independently evolving the tree phenotype.

      But still really cool (and maybe turns on exactly how much evolution your consider needs to happen before it’s convergent evolution.)