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Related Concept Videos

Convergent Evolution01:54

Convergent Evolution

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Evolution shapes the features of organisms over time, ensuring that they are suited for the environments in which they live. Sometimes, selection pressure leads to the rise of similar but unrelated adaptations in organisms with no recent common ancestors, a process known as convergent evolution.
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Symbiotic relationships are long-term, close interactions between individuals of different species that affect the distribution and abundance of those species. When a relationship is beneficial to both species, this is called mutualism. When the relationship is beneficial to one species but neither beneficial nor harmful to the other species, this is called commensalism. When one organism is harmed to benefit another, the relationship is known as parasitism. These types of relationships often...
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Next-generation sequencing technologies have created large genomic databases of a variety of animals and plants. Ever since the human genome project was completed, scientists studied the genome of primates, mammals, and other phylogenetically distant living beings. Such large-scale  studies have provided new insights into the evolutionary relationship between organisms.
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Predators consume prey for energy. Predators that acquire prey and prey that avoid predation both increase their chances of survival and reproduction (i.e., fitness). Routine predator-prey interactions elicit mutual adaptations that improve predator offenses, such as claws, teeth, and speed, as well as prey defenses, including crypsis, aposematism, and mimicry. Thus, predator-prey interactions resemble an evolutionary arms race.
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Convergence in Multispecies Interactions.

Leonora S Bittleston1, Naomi E Pierce1, Aaron M Ellison2

  • 1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution
|February 10, 2016
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Convergent interactions describe how unrelated species independently evolve similar ecological functions. This concept aids in predicting organism roles and selective pressures in diverse ecosystems.

Keywords:
community ecologyconvergent evolutionmicrobemutualismsymbiosis

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Microbiology

Background:

  • Convergent evolution and community convergence show how similar selective pressures shape unrelated organisms and communities.
  • Natural selection can favor similar types of species associations repeatedly.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Introduce the concept of "convergent interactions" to describe the independent evolution of multispecies interactions with similar functions.
  • Clarify how natural selection drives the repeated evolution of particular species associations.
  • Facilitate predictions of ecological roles and selective pressures in complex and novel multispecies systems.

Main Methods:

  • Conceptual framework development.
  • Comparative analysis of existing ecological and evolutionary studies.
  • Illustration with diverse examples.

Main Results:

  • Convergent interactions represent a framework for understanding how similar ecological functions arise independently in different species assemblages.
  • The concept applies across various biological scales, from microbial symbionts to complex food webs.
  • Examples include vertebrate-gut bacteria, ectomycorrhizae, insect-microbe associations, pitcher-plant ecosystems, and ant-plant mutualisms.

Conclusions:

  • Focusing on convergent interactions enhances our ability to predict organismal ecological roles and the selective pressures shaping them.
  • This concept is particularly valuable for studying poorly understood or newly discovered multispecies systems, including microbial communities.
  • Convergent interactions offer a unifying perspective on the evolution of ecological functions across diverse taxa and environments.