[Mitarbeiter.zoologie] Parallel vs. Convergent Evolution

[Andreia Teixeira]

Dear all,

Maybe a bit out of context for some of you, but it comes along with our
book chapter discussion today and it might be also interesting for the
others.

I just came across a discussion on parallel and convergent evolution on
twitter, mainly focusing on the new covid variants. Here are some of the
sources I found useful and/or interesting.

Emergence in late 2020 of multiple lineages of SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein
variants affecting amino acid position 677 (the discussion started based on
this pre-print, I should say I did not read it):
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.12.21251658v2

List of several terms' definition (homoplasy, parallelism, plesiomorphy,
etc):
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols/ontologies/hom/terms

(Non)Parallel Evolution (review, 2018):
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110617-062240

"Some definitions. Parallel evolution is the evolution of similar
phenotypes or genotypes in multiple independent populations, in response to
similar selection pressures, from *similar initial conditions.*

Convergent evolution is the evolution of similar phenotypes or genotypes in
multiple independent populations, in response to similar selection
pressures, from *different initial conditions.*"

Best,
Andreia

-- 

PhD Student
Martin-Luther University
Institute of Biology
General Zoology Group

Hoher Weg 8, 06120 Halle, Germany
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