convergent evolution
nounWhen different animals or plants slowly change to look or act alike because they live in similar places.
The wings of bats and birds are a result of convergent evolution, since both groups developed flight separately.
OTHER MEANINGS
2. The independent development of similar traits in species that do not share a recent common ancestor.
Convergent evolution explains why dolphins and sharks have similar body shapes despite being distant relatives.
3. In biology, the process by which unrelated organisms evolve comparable features in response to similar environmental pressures.
Cacti in deserts and euphorbias in African drylands show convergent evolution in their water-storing stems.
4. A pattern in which separate lineages arrive at comparable solutions to the same survival problem.
Echolocation in bats and whales is a classic case of convergent evolution.