Episode 70 - Convergent Evolution

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Natural Sciences, Education, Earth Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2019

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With all the incredible diversity of life, it’s fascinating how often evolution repeats itself. The fossil record and the modern world are full of signs of this pattern of convergent evolution – similar pressures drive organisms to similar features and lifestyles. In this episode, we’ll talk about what exactly convergent evolution entails, share some of our favorite examples, and talk about how things can get a bit confusing. Did we mention your favorite example of convergent evolution? In the news: rhino DNA, baby sea turtles, sea snake breathing, and dinosaur temperatures. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:04:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:32:30Main discussion, Part 2: 01:02:00Patron question: 01:35:30 Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures:http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ The Common Descent Store is open! Get merch! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast/PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Muscial Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:19.0	Hello, David. Hello, Will. And hello, David.
0:20.8	Hello, Will.
0:22.8	And hello, listeners.
0:24.2	Welcome to episode 70 of the Commitcent podcast.
0:27.9	Welcome back.
0:29.1	And in this episode, we will be discussing one of my favorite topics, Convergent
0:33.2	Evolution.
0:34.2	Ooh, this one's been a long time coming.
0:36.1	It has.
0:36.7	It's been on the list for a while. So Convergent evolution, a lot of you have
0:40.4	probably heard of before. It's a fairly common term, but it's a complicated one as well.
0:47.5	So as common places, it seems to be, there's a lot of weirdness to it. The concept is this is
0:53.6	when animals look like each other
0:55.3	even though they aren't related. Yes, animals, plants, anything evolutionary, developing the same
1:03.1	sort of thing. Yes. Separately. Yeah, by themselves. Converging on the same evolutionary, I was going to say end point, but solution is a better,
1:13.6	yes, a solution to a problem.
1:15.4	The same feature.
1:17.5	Yeah, so the classic example, things like birds and bats and pterosaurs, each evolved wings,
1:24.9	very similarly, even though they all came from separate non-flying ancestors.
1:29.9	And we'll discuss that example in more detail, because that is one of the classic examples.
1:33.9	Indeed, indeed.
	...

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