Welcome!
This website aims to tell you nearly everything you need (and may ever want) to know about convergent evolution. It allows you to explore the way that similar adaptive solutions have repeatedly evolved from unrelated starting points, as though following a metaphorical ‘map’.
We have identified hundreds of examples of convergence, so if you want to learn about convergence in sex (e.g. love-darts), eyes (e.g. camera-eyes in jellyfish), agriculture (e.g. in ants) or gliding (e.g. in lizards and mammals) then this is your best port of call.
Any of the information presented in the Map of Life may be freely reproduced, as long as it is acknowledged fully. Citation details can be found at the bottom of each Topic, in the format: Map of Life – “Topic title”, Topic web page address, Month/Year downloaded
Showcase Topic: Silk production and use in arthropods
Spotlight on Research:
“The sensory world of the platypus”
J.D. Pettigrew, P.R. Manger & S.L.B. Fine 1998, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, volume 353, pages 1199-1210.
This paper discusses the senses of the platypus, including its electric sense. It is mediated by electroreceptors on the bill skin, which is also laced with mechanoreceptors. In the platypus brain, the mechano- and electroreceptive neurons are intimately associated in a stripe-like array that is reminiscent of the primary visual cortex in primates.
